Increasing Urban Youth Participation in Computing through Mentorship and Coding Resources

让代表性不足和服务不足的学生参与计算机科学是未来劳动力发展的重要目标。该项目的主要目标是在新泽西州纽瓦克市创建一个由年轻程序员（主要是中学生）、导师和教师组成的可持续生态系统。为了实现这样一个生态系统，该项目将：1)为代表性不足和服务不足的中学生提供计算机教育；2)让父母参与并教育他们计算思维和计算对孩子的教育、职业和未来生活的重要性；3)开发和维护编程师徒关系；4)向在职（和潜在的未来）教师介绍编程概念以及如何传递这些概念；5)让教师充分参与研究问题解决周期。为了完成这些任务，该项目将每学期在参与的中学校园对中学生进行为期10周的周六活动。在项目开始之前，该项目将在当地一所中学举办一个家长之夜，向家长们介绍该项目、计算机以及他们的孩子为什么应该参加该项目。每周六有7个小时，分为上午（用HTML和CSS建立一个网站）和下午（学习文本和块编程语言）。每隔一周，一位来自社区的演讲嘉宾将简要介绍她/他的职业生涯，以及计算如何推动了他/她的职业发展。每个班将至少有一名中学教师和至少两名大学生，他们将共同教授这个班并相互学习。一旦学生们完成了为期10周的项目，该项目将邀请他们加入埃塞克斯县城市联盟的编码之家，这是一个位于纽瓦克市中心的指定空间，供当地的K-8和大学生继续他们的编码活动。在这里，学生们可以互相学习，共同完成项目，发展导师/学员关系。这个研究和发展项目有潜力告知其他社区将计算机教育融入他们的学校，让家长参与其中，为实践教师提供学习计算机主题的机会，并为大学生提供实践教学经验（他们也可能对成为K-8教师的替代路径感兴趣）。本项目由“学生与教师信息技术体验计划”和“全民计算机科学计划”支持。这项研究将为以下方面提供新的见解：父母的动机/教育，如何有效地培养教师的计算思维，如何促进大学生合作教师进入教学行业（如果他们愿意的话），以及如何通过社区编码空间创建一个生态系统，让学生参与编程。该计划将探讨以下研究问题：我们社区的父母（或监护人）有什么特殊需要？该计划如何协助他们帮助他们的孩子成功？该项目如何在非侵入性、安全的环境中培训在职（和潜在的未来）教师？中学教师如何在与项目团队建立公平的研究-实践伙伴关系的背景下，制定针对计算机的教学内容知识？该项目如何为新泽西州中学生提供和准备可访问的、相关的、有效的、在计算机方面知识渊博的同伴导师和榜样？数据将主要包括：问卷答复；家长之夜活动、教师访谈和教师观察的书面记录；纽瓦克儿童守则参与中学的出勤记录；来自城市联盟的访客记录（家长之夜活动和编码之家的参与）；服务器日志从Gidget网站和在线存储库的纽瓦克儿童代码学生Scratch和code.org项目。该项目将使用前后分析和定性数据编码来描述干预措施的影响。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Engaging underrepresented and underserved students in computer science is an important goal for the development of the future workforce. The primary goal of this project is to create a sustainable ecosystem of young programmers (primarily middle school students), mentors, and teachers in the city of Newark, NJ. To achieve such an ecosystem, the project will: 1) Provide computing education to underrepresented and underserved middle school students; 2) Involve parents in and educate them about the importance of computational thinking and computing for their children's education, career, and future life; 3) Develop and maintain mentor-mentee relationships in coding; 4) Teach practicing (and potential future) teachers introductory programming concepts and how to pass them on; and 5) Fully involve teachers in the research problem-solving cycle. To accomplish these tasks, the project will run 10-week Saturday programs for middle school students each semester at participating middle school campuses. Before the start of the program, the project will have a parents' night at a local middle school to educate parents about the program, computing, and why their children should participate in the program. Each Saturday will consist of a 7-hour day, split into a morning session (building a website with HTML and CSS) and an afternoon session (learning text and block programming languages). Every other week, a guest speaker from the community will give a brief presentation of her/his career and how it was advanced by computing. Each class will have a minimum of one teacher from the middle school and a minimum of two university students who will co-teach the class and learn from each other. Once the students have finished their 10-week program, the project will invite them to join the Coding House of the Urban League of Essex County, a designated space in central Newark for local K-8 and university students to continue with their coding activities. Here, the students can learn from each other, work on projects, and develop mentor/mentee relationships. This research and development project has the potential to inform other communities about integrating computing education into their schools, involving parents, providing opportunities for practicing teachers to learn about computing topics, and giving university students practical teaching experience (who may also become interested in becoming alternate path K-8 teachers themselves). This project is supported by the Information Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers and Computer Science for All programs. This research will contribute new insights into parental motivation/education, how to effectively train practicing teachers in computational thinking, how to facilitate the entry of university student co-teachers into the teaching profession (if they wish), and how to create an ecosystem to keep students engaged with programming through a community coding space. The project will address the following research questions: What are the specific needs of our community's parents (or guardians), and how can the project assist them to help their children succeed? How can the project train practicing (and potential future) teachers in a non-invasive, safe environment? How can middle school teachers formulate pedagogical content knowledge targeted towards computing in the context of an equitable Research-Practice Partnership with the project team? How can the project provide and prepare accessible, relatable, and effective near-peer mentors and role-models who are knowledgably in computing to NJ middle school students? Data will primarily consist of: responses from questionnaires; written notes from Parents' Night events, teacher interviews, and teacher observations; attendance records from Newark Kids Code's participating middle schools; visitor logs from the Urban League (Parents' Night events and Coding House participation); server logs from Gidget website and online repositories of Newark Kids Code Student Scratch and code.org projects. The project will use pre-post analysis and coding of qualitative data to describe the impacts of the interventions.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.