Collaborative Research: Accessible Computational Thinking in Elementary Science Classes within and across Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Contexts

目前，与黑人、拉丁裔、美洲原住民和认同女性的同龄人相比，白人、富裕和以男性为身份的学生往往对科学和计算机相关职业产生更大的兴趣和追求。然而，科学、计算和计算思维推动着社会决策和问题解决。在科学和计算机相关的职业中缺乏文化和种族多样性可能导致社会制度和决策结构未能考虑广泛的观点和专门知识。教师在培养学生发展这些技能并在技术和科学世界中取得成功方面发挥着关键作用。因此，研究教师如何帮助不同文化和语言的学生对科学和计算机产生更大的理解和兴趣是至关重要的。这一研究项目旨在通过使用与文化相关的教学，即以与不同文化和语言背景的学生相关的方式进行教学，加强小学教师在科学和计算思维教育学方面的教育。该项目将在暑期支持60名小学教师进行专业发展，并在学年期间提供持续的学习机会，以了解并将与文化相关的计算思维应用到他们的科学教学中。通过这样做，该项目旨在提高所有小学生的计算体验的数量和质量，并支持NSF在扩大STEM劳动力参与方面的承诺。该项目还将制作资源、措施和工具来支持小学教师从事这类工作，并将与其他STEM研究人员和教师教育工作者共享这些资源、措施和工具。该研究项目的目标是设计和促进以与文化相关的方式将计算思维融入基础科学课堂的教学实践。该项目将寻求增强实习小学教师的方法，以便有意义和有效地将计算思维融入到他们的常规科学教学实践中，以便所有学生都能接触到课程。它还将探讨这些方法对学生学习和自我效能感的影响。该项目的范围将包括在三年内与马里兰州、亚利桑那州和华盛顿特区的多个非常独特的学校环境合作，接触到大约60名小学教师和1200名学生。为了实现项目目标，研究小组将利用并行的混合方法，包括教师和学生访谈、反思、观察、描述性案例研究报告以及回归和多层次建模。该项目的研究结果将使该领域了解：(A)教师对计算思维的概念化；(B)小学教师在尝试将计算思维与与文化相关的教学实践相结合时遇到的障碍；(C)在教师专业发展经验和整个学年中有效的支持类型；以及(D)能够在不同地区保持整合努力的教师队伍的发展。探索研究学前教育-12课程(DRK-12)旨在通过研究和开发创新资源、模式和工具，显著提高学前教育-12年级的学生和教师对STEM学科的学习和教学。DRK-12计划中的项目建立在STEM教育的基础研究和先前的研究和开发工作的基础上，为拟议的项目提供了理论和经验上的证明。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Currently, students who are white, affluent, and identify as male tend to develop a greater interest in and pursuit of science and computing-related careers compared to their Black, Latinx, Native American, and female-identifying peers. Yet, science, computing, and computational thinking drive societal decision-making and problem-solving. The lack of cultural and racial diversity in science and computing-related careers can lead to societal systems and decision-making structures that fail to consider a wide range of perspectives and expertise. Teachers play a critical role in preparing students to develop these skills and succeed in a technological and scientific world. For this reason, it is crucial to investigate how teachers can help culturally and linguistically diverse students develop a greater understanding of and interest in science and computers. This research project aims to enhance elementary teacher education in science and computational thinking pedagogy through the use of Culturally Relevant Teaching, i.e. teaching in ways that are relevant to students from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds The project will support 60 elementary teachers in summer professional development and consistent learning opportunities during the school year to learn about and enact culturally relevant computational thinking into their science instruction. In doing so, the project aims to increase both the quantity and quality of computing experiences for all elementary students and support NSF’s commitment in broadening participation in the STEM workforce. The project will also produce resources, measures, and tools to support elementary teachers to do this kind of work, which will be shared with other STEM researchers and teacher educators.The goal of this research project is to design and promote teaching practices that integrate computational thinking in the elementary science classroom in culturally relevant ways. This project will seek to empower practicing elementary teachers’ approaches to meaningfully and effectively integrate and adapt computational thinking into their regular science teaching practice so that all students can access the curriculum. It will also explore the impact of these approaches on student learning and self-efficacy. The scope of this project will include working with multiple highly distinct school settings in Maryland, Arizona, and Washington DC across three years, reaching approximately 60 elementary teachers and 1,200 students. To achieve the project objectives, the research team will leverage concurrent mixed methods approaches that include teacher and student interviews, reflections, observations, descriptive case study reports as well as regression and multilevel modeling. The project’s findings will inform the fields’ understanding of: (a) teachers’ conceptualization of computational thinking; (b) the barriers elementary teachers encounter when trying to integrate computational thinking with culturally relevant teaching practices; (c) the types of support that are effective in teacher professional development experiences and throughout the school year; and (d) the development of a cohort of teachers that can maintain integration efforts in different districts.The Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of STEM subjects by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects.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.