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、美洲原住民和女性同龄人相比，富裕的白人男性学生倾向于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解决问题。科学和计算机相关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无法考虑广泛的观点和专业知识。在培养学生发展这些技能并在科技世界中取得成功方面，教师起着至关重要的作用。因此，研究教师如何帮助文化和语言不同的学生培养对科学和计算机的更好理解和兴趣是至关重要的。本研究计划旨在透过运用文化相关教学，加强小学教师在科学与计算思维教学法方面的教育。该项目将支持60名小学教师进行暑期专业发展，并在学年期间提供持续的学习机会，以学习与文化相关的计算思维，并将其纳入他们的科学教学。通过这样做，该项目旨在提高所有小学生计算体验的数量和质量，并支持NSF扩大STEM劳动力参与的承诺。该项目还将提供资源、措施和工具，以支持小学教师开展这类工作，并将与其他STEM研究人员和教师教育者共享。本研究计画的目标是设计并促进以文化相关的方式将计算思维整合到小学科学课堂的教学实践。本项目旨在使小学教师的实践方法更有意义、更有效地将计算思维融入到他们的常规科学教学实践中，从而使所有学生都能接触到课程。本文还将探讨这些方法对学生学习和自我效能的影响。该项目将在三年内与马里兰州、亚利桑那州和华盛顿特区的多所特色鲜明的学校合作，涉及约60名小学教师和1200名学生。为了实现项目目标，研究团队将利用并行混合方法，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有助于各领域对以下方面的理解：(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文化相关的教学实践相结合时遇到的障碍；（三）在教师专业发展经验和整个学年中有效的支持类型；(d)培养一批能够在不同地区维持融合努力的教师。探索研究项目（DRK-12）旨在通过研究和开发创新资源、模型和工具，显著提高幼儿园至12年级学生和教师对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实证依据。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。

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.