Technical Assistance Workshop on Research Practitioner Partnerships for CSforAll:RPP in Atlanta, Georgia

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Computer science is becoming part of many professional fields, from engineering to medicine to art, and general computational literacy is necessary to be safe from cybersecurity threats and to adapt technology to support our families, friends, and communities. Our education system is responding to this change by devoting many resources towards giving all K-12 students opportunities to learn computer science, including efforts by education researchers, teachers and administrators of school systems, and policy makers. To ensure that solutions benefit the whole system equitably and broaden participation in K-12 computer science education, researcher-practitioner partnerships pair different stakeholders to align their efforts and maximize efficacy for K-12 students. These various groups, however, typically do not work together so closely. Thus, they need to build their knowledge and skills for supporting a researcher-practitioner partnership to ensure their success. The project will bring researcher-practitioner partnership teams together for a workshop to develop their knowledge and skill. Specifically, the goals of the workshop are to 1) recommend models for researcher-practitioner partnership team composition and goals, 2) provide strategies and tools for maintaining an effective researcher-practitioner partnership team, 3) discuss data collection and analysis methods to support research and implementation goals of researcher-practitioner partnerships, and 4) explore how to evaluate impact and broadening participation in computer science education. To meet these goals, the project will host a 1.5-day Technical Assistance Workshop on Researcher-Practitioner Partnerships in Atlanta, Georgia. The project team will invite researcher-practitioner partnership teams working on K-12 computer science education projects to participate in the workshop. They will also invite nationally renowned speakers who specialize in forming and maintaining researcher-practitioner partnerships, educational evaluation and impact, and leading existing partnerships in K-12 computer science education to build knowledge and skill of participants. Participants will also have nearly half of the workshop time to expand upon their teams designs and plans for computer science education in their communities. Speakers and other facilitators from the Atlanta area who work in K-12 computer science education will provide guidance and feedback to the teams. By gathering all of these people together, the project team can effectively collect and disseminate information about K-12 computer science education, broadening participation in computer science education equitably, educational research including data collection and analysis, researcher-practitioner partnership team composition and maintenance, and evaluating and documenting impact of researcher-practitioner partnership activities. By building the knowledge and skill of those working in researcher-practitioner partnerships, the project team contributes to making computer science education truly accessible to every K-12 student and broaden participation in computing.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.