Designing a residency-based CS teacher preparation program with a high school community

研究人员、政策制定者、从业者和家庭对扩大K12计算机教育的重要性达成了广泛的共识。然而，在高中实施计算机科学（CS）课程并聘请合格的教师教授这些课程是主要障碍，特别是在为边缘化人群服务的学校。先前的研究表明，社区参与对于设计新的计算机科学课程如何融入学校课程非常重要；社区参与对于设计以实习为基础的教师准备计划也很重要，在这个计划中，未来的教师学会使他们的学科知识与学生相关并突出，学生是家庭、社区和文化的多方面成员。纽约州立大学布法罗分校和洛克波特市学区之间的这一研究-实践合作伙伴关系，探索了同时为这两种挑战设计解决方案的潜在好处，基于这一关键见解，这两种挑战都依赖于建立一个广泛共享的愿景，即计算机科学将如何以及为什么成为学校的一部分。这个项目将通过开发模型来公平地扩大计算机的参与，通过这些模型，边缘化社区可以设想计算机在其子女的未来中所扮演的角色。通过一个基于设计的实施研究过程，来自纽约州立大学布法罗分校和洛克波特市学区高中的利益相关者将设计一个职前计算机科学教师驻地合作伙伴关系，并将设计学校的计算机科学课程路径。为了支持社区成员在知情的情况下获得权力，一组学生将在青年自助课程中学习计算机科学，然后在第一个课程中由青年共同教授社区自助课程。该项目将使用一个称为猜想映射的过程来研究引导课程的设计如何产生对计算机科学的定位理解，这些理解如何支持计算机科学设计委员会的授权参与，以及社区参与计算机科学设计委员会如何产生有效，公平和广泛支持的设计。项目团队希望表明，以社区为基础、以正义为导向的方法能够提供互利的解决方案，以增加所有学生获得计算机科学课程的机会，并培训将这些课程付诸实践的教师。由此产生的知识、模型和研究能力将直接支持在纽约西部建立K12 CS实践区域社区，同时提供可在其他地方复制的模型和设计过程。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。

There is widespread consensus amongst researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and families on the importance of expanding access to K12 computing education. However, implementing computer science (CS) courses in high schools and hiring qualified teachers to teach them are major barriers, particularly in schools serving marginalized populations. Prior work has shown that community involvement is important for designing how new CS courses will fit into a school’s program; community involvement is also important for designing residency-based teacher preparation programs in which future teachers learn to make their disciplinary knowledge relevant and salient to their students, who are multi-faceted members of families, communities, and cultures. This research-practitioner partnership between SUNY Buffalo and Lockport City School District explores the potential benefits of designing solutions for both challenges at the same time, based on the key insight that both depend on building a broadly-shared vision of how and why computer science will become part of the school. This project will equitably broaden participation in computing by developing models by which marginalized communities are included in envisioning the role computing will have in their children’s futures.Through a process of design-based implementation research, stakeholders from the SUNY Buffalo and the high school in Lockport City School District will design a pre-service CS teacher residency partnership and will also design the school’s CS curricular pathways. In order to support community members in empowered, informed participation, a group of students will learn CS in a youth bootstrapping course, followed by a bootstrapping course for the community co-taught by youth from the first course. This project will use a process called conjecture mapping to study how the design of the bootstrapping courses produce situated understandings of CS, how these understandings support empowered participation in the CS design committee, and how community involvement in the CS design committee yield effective, equitable, and broadly-supported designs. The project team hopes to show that a community-based, justice-oriented approach surfaces mutually-beneficial solutions to increasing all students’ access to CS course offerings and training the teachers who will bring them to life. The resulting knowledge, models, and research capacity will directly support the establishment of a regional community of K12 CS practice in western New York while offering models and design processes which can be replicated elsewhere.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.