Pairing Atlanta High School Teachers with HBCU Computer Science Students to Train Them on AP Computer Science Principles

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Morehouse College proposes to explore outcomes of a novel teacher professional development (PD) program that prepares in-service high school teachers to teach the Advance Placement Computer Science Principles (AP CSP) course, the Beauty and Joy of Computing (BJC), with support from undergraduate computer science (CS) majors. The work leverages longstanding relationships between members of the Atlanta University Center Consortium (Morehouse College, Spelman College, and Clark Atlanta University), and the Atlanta Public Schools (APS). APS predominantly serves and employs African American and other minority students and teachers. Likewise, the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) of the Atlanta University Center primarily serve minority undergraduate students. Through this unique model, minority in-service, high school teachers will receive BJC professional development and support from minority undergraduate CS students in teaching their majority-minority AP CSP classes. The undergraduates will serve both as teaching assistants for the new CS teachers and as role models for the students. In turn, minority APS students will receive rigorous CS instruction made relevant and contextualized within their culture. This project will study the effects of in-person undergraduate teaching assistants during PD for and implementation of the BJC curriculum within minority populations. It will examine the outcomes of these teaching assistant/teacher relationships, examining changes in teachers' CS content knowledge, understanding of careers in computing, confidence in teaching CS, and success in recruiting and retaining students of color. Likewise, it will examine effects on the undergraduate student teaching assistants in terms of ability to provide instructional support, levels of civic engagement, CS content knowledge, and professional identity.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.