BPC-AE Collaborative Research: Researching Equity and Antiracist Learning in CS (REAL-CS)

俄勒冈大学将与加州大学洛杉矶分校合作，扩展REAL-CS BPC联盟，以解决高中计算机科学教育中历史和当前的种族和性别差异。该项目的重点是扩大黑人、土著、拉丁裔和太平洋岛民学生的参与，利用交叉性的视角，解决高中计算机科学（CS）教育中的系统性障碍，将影响美国公立高中数千名学生、教师和管理人员。REAL-CS将支持和维持以股权为中心和以研究为基础的探索计算机科学（ECS）项目。REAL-CS与地区和州合作项目合作，每年将培养250名ECS教师。联盟还将通过高级专业发展为32名经验丰富的ECS教师提供支持，并为另外30名ECS教师领导提供支持，作为ECS国家促进者研讨会的一部分。总的来说，REAL-CS将覆盖大约2万名高中生，他们将有机会从准备充分的教师那里学习以股权为中心的CS课程。此外，课程更新将在网上免费共享，供全国约3500名现任ECS教师使用。此外，管理员指南将在项目网站上免费提供，深入的专业发展系列将与联盟合作伙伴合作，在美国培训40名管理员。最后，该联盟的教师、管理人员和学生的研究不仅将为内部创建的项目提供信息，还将在全国其他联盟和CS项目中传播，以确保青年的声音和教育者的经验为CS倡议的创建和实施提供信息。总的来说，REAL-CS的主要目标是在高中创造必要的条件和能力，使有色人种学生公平地参与高质量的计算机科学课程。BPC联盟的扩展支持BPC的使命，即通过反种族主义的方法，破坏和解决高中计算机科学（CS）中的系统性种族主义，挑战学校能力建设的色盲观念。我们的扩展将深化联盟的项目和奖学金，以解决计算机科学教育中的系统性不平等问题，其中三个关键群体的参与者是高中计算机科学教育生态系统的核心：教师、管理人员和学生。通过全国范围内的“探索计算机科学”（ECS）项目，项目团队将进一步扩大课程资源，为新入职的ECS教师提供专业发展服务，并为有经验的ECS教师提供新的专业学习机会，学习新兴的计算机主题，如新的人工智能单元。所有的课程开发和教师学习研讨会都将包括以探究、公平和计算概念为重点的教学设计，同时扩大对反种族主义和如何将这些原则付诸实践的理解。该项目将继续调查管理人员在支持教师方面可以发挥的作用，这些教师正在努力通过识别和解决学校网站上的系统障碍来扩大计算机在课堂上的参与。除了研究这些努力在促进教师和管理人员围绕公平和计算学习方面的有效性之外，项目团队还将进一步开展学生声音研究，以扩大计算机科学教育中最边缘化的学生的声音。通过扩展我们的联盟项目，在ECS专业发展、课程资源和研究中注入反种族主义设计原则和教学法，这项工作将对课程、专业发展议程、评估指标、反种族主义CS教育研究和其他支持ECS项目的凝聚力资源产生全国性的影响。REAL-CS联盟扩展将通过以下方式共同创造系统性变革：1)增加CS教育者和学校管理者的知识、能力以及种族和文化包容性实践的使用；2)以反种族主义的设计原则更新现有的ECS课程和补充课程材料；3)在美国进行深入的定性研究，从学生的角度调查以公平为导向的教师信念和实践，管理者信念和实践，以及CS学习经历的影响。这个项目的计划和研究工作将有助于更广泛的教育界对如何将反种族主义纳入BPC议程的理解。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。

The University of Oregon, in collaboration with the University of California-Los Angeles, will extend the REAL-CS BPC Alliance to address the historical and current racial and gender disparities in participation in high school computer science education. With a focus on broadening participation for Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and Pacific Islander students, using a lens of intersectionality, the project's reach into addressing systemic barriers in high school computer science (CS) education will impact thousands of students, teachers, and administrators in US public high schools. REAL-CS will support and sustain the equity-focused and research-based Exploring Computer Science (ECS) program. In collaboration with regional and state partner programs, REAL-CS will prepare 250 ECS teachers per year. The Alliance will also support 32 experienced ECS teachers through advanced professional development and an additional 30 ECS teacher leaders as part of the ECS national facilitator workshop. In total, REAL-CS will reach approximately 20,000 high school students who will have the opportunity to take an equity-focused CS course from highly prepared teachers. Further, a curricular refresh will be shared online and freely available, to be used by an estimated 3,500 current ECS teachers nationwide. Additionally, an administrator guide will be freely available on the project website, and the deep-dive professional development series will train 40 administrators across the US in collaboration with Alliance partners. Finally, research across the teacher, administrator, and student perspectives of this Alliance will not only inform internally-created programs, but also be disseminated across other Alliances and CS projects nationwide to ensure that youth voice and educator experiences inform the creation and implementation of CS initiatives. Overall, the key goal of REAL-CS is to create the necessary conditions and capacity in high schools that lead to equitable participation of students of color in high-quality computer science classes. This BPC Alliance Extension supports a BPC mission to challenge colorblind notions of building capacity in schools through antiracist approaches that disrupt and address systemic racism in high school computer science (CS). Our Extension will deepen the Alliance's programs and scholarship to address systemic inequities in CS education with three key groups of participants central to the high school CS educational ecosystem: teachers, administrators, and students. Through the nationwide Exploring Computer Science (ECS) program, the project team will further expand curricular resources, professional development offerings to onboard new teachers to teach ECS, and add on new professional learning opportunities for experienced ECS teachers on emerging computing topics, such as the new Artificial Intelligence unit. All curricular developments and teacher learning workshops will include instructional designs that focus on inquiry, equity, and computing concepts, while expanding understanding of antiracism and how to put those principles into practice. The project will continue to investigate the role administrators can play in supporting teachers who are working to broaden participation in computing in their classrooms through identifying and addressing systemic barriers at their school sites. Along with research queries that will examine the efficacy of these efforts in fostering teacher and administrator learning around equity and computing, the project team will also further their line of student voice research to amplify the voices of students in CS education who have been the most marginalized. By extending our constellation of Alliance programs to infuse antiracist design principles and pedagogy in ECS professional development, curricular resources, and research, this work will have nationwide impacts on curricula, professional development agendas, evaluation metrics, antiracist CS education research, and other cohesive resources that support ECS programs. The REAL-CS Alliance Extension will collectively create systemic change by: 1) increasing CS educator and school administrator knowledge, capacity, and use of racially and culturally inclusive practices; 2) refreshing existing ECS curriculum and supplementary curricular materials with antiracist design tenets; 3) conducting deep qualitative research across the US that investigates equity-oriented teacher beliefs and practices, administrator beliefs and practices, and the impact of CS learning experiences from student perspectives. Both programmatic and research efforts from this project will contribute to the broader educational community’s understanding of how to center antiracism in BPC agendas.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.