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Building CS Teacher Capacity Through Comprehensive College/High School Partnerships

Robin Flatland (CS), Jim Matthews (CS), Pauline White(CS), MaryAnne Egan (CS), Jesse Moya (Education)

Work supported by NSF Grant #1923378

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Need

~ 50% of US high schools do not offer a course in Computer Science

< 5% of high schools students complete a CS course before graduating

< 3% of high school girls take a CS course

Minority, economically disadvantaged, and rural students are underrepresented in high school CS classes

Students from underrepresented groups more impacted by unqualified teachers

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CS Dept at Siena has a history of supporting pre-college CS education.

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Outreach programs to schools from 1980s to present.

We offer undergraduate CS courses in late afternoons with remote options for teachers

Fall 2019 - Fall 2021: 19 different teachers completed 31 courses

Outreach programs for HS teachers and students from 1980s to present.

High School Programming Contests from 1986 to present.

Established area CSTA chapter with 36 schools represented and ~60 teachers

IUSE Grant project

NSF Noyce grant

High School/Siena College

Dual Enrollment Program

CSforAll - Building Teacher Capacity through Comprehensive College/HS partnerships

NSF Grant 1923778

Outreach programs for HS teachers and students from 1980s to present.

High School Programming Contests from 1986 to present.

Established area CSTA chapter with 36 schools represented and ~60 teachers

IUSE Grant project

NSF Noyce grant

High School/Siena College

Dual Enrollment Program

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Introduction to the Project

Our project is a research-practice partnership

Focused on building capacity

Commitment to equity at all phases

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Professional

Development

Course Curricula

Community Building

CS Certification Pathways

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Community Building

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Conference Presentations

HS Programming Contest

CSTA

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Our program utilizes the CAPE Framework

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	Schools need the Capacity to offer inclusive CS instruction
	Students must have equitable Access to CS courses
	Equitable Participation is dependent on capacity and access
	To have equitable and engaging Experiences students must be able to participate

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Participating Schools

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Number in parentheses indicates number of high-needs schools

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Shows growth in number of schools and therefore, number of students but we’ll talk about the students more specifically in a few minutes.

First to clarify how we determined which schools were considered “high-needs”... a school was classified as “high-needs” if it had 50% or more students classified as economically disadvantaged (as reported by the NYS Education department)

As you can see, the first two years do not include any schools classified as high needs, while our last two years had 5 and 8 schools respectively.

Our current grant started in F19, and we were intentional in recruiting specific schools to the project. For instance, we purposely sought out rural and economically disadvantaged schools. We had to work hard to get some of these schools, especially during the pandemic when some schools laid off teachers who taught CS.

Since the project has started, many schools have approached us and we get them started

2022-2023 projected to be around 30 (11) schools

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Curricula for two courses

Discovering CS

High school level
Equity minded
No pre-requisites or previous computing experience
Wide range of students across schools, sometimes in same classroom

Dual Enrollment Intro to CS

Opportunity to take as college credit
Fees waived if student qualifies for free/reduced lunch
Schools require at least Algebra 1 (NY Regents course) and the maturity to do college level work

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Our first course that we developed is the dual enrollment course where students can take it as college credit, they don’t have to, but it is possible.

Why 2 courses? Provide various entry points into CS courses. A college level CS course as a first course in CS is right for some students; others feel more comfortable with a high school level CS course as their first CS course.

The impacts of computing are explored in bi-weekly CS in the News discussions and activities (examples: assistive technology & accessibility, art & architecture, algorithmic bias, AI&Ethics)

There are 2 week long projects focusing on diversity and inclusion in CS

Content for both courses is provided with year long support and professional development

Work with HS teachers to adapt and refine these materials (helps to strengthen college/high school relationships)

And new for 2020: modified for remote instruction

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Participating Students

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Number in parentheses indicates number of students from high-needs schools

486 (185)

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Professional Development

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Summer

Week long program

School year

Scheduled meetings

RPP

Reflection

Targeted teacher practices

Equity best practices

The PD is run by the college faculty, the same faculty that created the curriculum.

We start at the end of the summer with a kick-off week attended by both new and experienced teachers.

For new teachers, in parallel sessions we cover CS content and pedagogy for the Discovering CS and for the dual-enrollment course.

It includes a popular session in which experienced teachers share and reflect on their experiences teaching these courses and answer questions from the new teachers.

We also offer joint sessions for all new and experienced teachers on equity issues in CS. This includes background on diversity and equity issues in CS and research based practices for recruiting and engaging a more diverse set of students in their CS class rooms. Last summer we ran an activity that used anonymous quotes from their own students obtained through interviews we conducted as part of an on-going research project on diversity. Hearing and responding to their own students speaking to diversity issues helped make it personal for the teachers and resulted in some engaging discussion.

The full group also comes together for lunches so that everyone can get to know each other.

Because the Discovering teachers are generally new to teaching CS, during the school year they meet for additional PD every other week. The dual-enrollment teachers on the other hand have typically taught the Discovering CS course already, so they have some CS teaching background. They also generally take in the dual-enrollment course offered at Siena for credit during or before the first year they offer it at their school, as a step towards earning a 2nd teaching certificate in CS. Therefore they meet less frequently for PD, approximately once or twice per quarter, and whenever needed for extra support.

To close the year in June, we have another full group meeting of all new and experienced teachers to review what the partnership has accomplished and reflect on what is working and not working.

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CS Certification for In-Service Teachers

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Requires 12 credit hours of CS with content related to the NY Computer Science & Digital Fluency Learning Standards

We offer undergraduate CS courses in late afternoons with remote options for teachers

No tuition or fees

Fall 2019 - Fall 2021: 19 different teachers completed 31 courses

NYS only recently approved a CS teaching certificate in 2018.
For in-service teachers who want to qualify for a second certificate in CS, the requirement is that they take 12 credit hours of CS with content related to the recently developed NY CS learning standards.
With these credits, in-service teachers can apply for an additional certification in CS through NYS’s independent certification pathway.
To facilitate taking of CS courses, faculty on this project have been offering CS courses in the late afternoons with remote options for teachers that cannot get to campus.
The cost of the course, tuition and fees, are covered by the grant.
To date, we have offered the 3-credit dual enrollment course, a 4-credit Java programming course, and a 3-credit web design course.
We encourage teachers planning to offer our dual enrollment course to take the course with us prior to teaching it or in the fall semester while offering it to their students.
Builds relationships between our college faculty and our high school teachers, strengthening our professional learning community
Our institution has committed to continuing to invite teachers to take these courses tuition free when our grant ends, as long as there are empty seats in the section. This continued support recognizes the importance of forming strong relationships with high schools in upstate NY because many of Siena’s undergraduate students come from these schools.

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Teacher Outcomes

Teacher efficacy
Sense of belonging
Retention of teachers

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Somewhat Neither agree Somewhat Agree Strongly

Disagree or disagree agree agree

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Opportunities to talk with CS educators from other high schools

3.5 5.0 6.7

Opportunities to talk with CS educators at CSTA meetings

4.2 5.4 6.3

Belong to a professional learning community of CS educators

5.1 5.9 6.7

We conducted teacher surveys at the beginning and end of each year, asking them about their confidence in teaching certain concepts in their CS classes and their sense of belonging to a CS community. The results show teacher efficacy and sense of belonging increased in all areas over time with participation in the program.

For the Discovering CS teachers, the increase in their confidence in teaching CS topics was most pronounced, most likely because many of these teachers have no prior experience teaching CS.

Results from 3 survey questions on belonging are shown on the right. Teachers responded on a 1 to 7 likert scale, with 1 being strong disagree and 7 being strongly agree. When asked if they felt they had opportunities to talk with CS educators from other high schools, the average response prior to participating in our program was 3.5 (between somewhat disagreeing and being neutral), after 1 year in our program it was 5.0 (somewhat agree), and after 2 or more years it was 6.7 (strongly agree). We also show the results for two other questions here concerning opportunities to talk with educators at CSTA meetings and belonging to a professional learning community of CS educators, with similar growth in responses.

Our teacher retention rates have been strong. Since this grant started in Fall of 2019, we have worked with 28 teachers to help them offer Siena supported CS classes. Only three teachers are no longer teaching CS, and of those 3 one retired and another was promoted to a technology coach for their district. In all three cases of losing a teacher, we were able to work with the school to get a new teacher trained so that the school could continue to offer CS courses.

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Teacher Quotes on Teaching

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I definitely recommend that math teachers consider teaching CS. After my first year of teaching CS I realized that I could substantially improve my math teaching.

I have used the student led lesson style from my CS classes to create a more open environment in my math classes.

Teaching CS will truly broaden your perspective of how a classroom should be run and what students are capable of.

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Student Outcomes

Increased confidence
Demographics

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	CS Students
Rural	38
Suburban	204
City	163

	CS Students	Black/Latinx CS Students
Rural	38	3%
Suburban	204	6%
City	163	62%

	CS Students	Black/Latinx CS Students	Overall School Black/Latinx
Rural	38	3%	4%
Suburban	204	6%	9%
City	163	62%	67%

We also conducted student surveys at the beginning and end of the year to detect changes in their perceptions about CS.

From pre to post surveys, the results showed statistically significant increases in the students’ confidence in their understanding of CS concepts and programming skills

They also showed students felt more aware of CS opportunities, had more women CS role models, and better understood how CS applied to their everyday lives.

We also collected CS classroom demographic data from the schools at the end of each year and compared that to the demographics of the schools overall.

In the table shown, we show the %s of Black/Latinx students by school type - rural, suburban, and city - because these schools types had similar demographics. The first column shows the number of students enrolled in the CS classes from each school type, the next column shows the percent of Black/Latinx students enrolled in the CS classes, and the last column shows the overall percent Black/LatinX students at the schools. You can see that the CS classroom percent is just below the overall school percent.

While the project has made positive strides towards promoting equity, we also recognize that there is still a lot of work left to do. We need to continue to work to increase the percent of Black/Latinx students in CS classes. And the CS classes at the high schools we work with are still predominantly male, with only ~26% females enrolled. A lesson we have learned in this work is that addressing equity issues and increasing CS participation has to involve more administrative and guidance counselor support. In our future work for this project we plan to work closely with equity teams of administrators, guidance counselors and teachers to address these issues.

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Teacher Quotes on Student Outcomes

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Getting students to interact with their peers and work through their ideas with the confidence to try again after failing is the secret to any successful classroom environment. That is why all students should take CS

Weaker students became confident in their work and honors students created more and more details to their work. The CS class became their favorite course.

Some students who were less than confident in math became incredibly proud of the results of their "code".

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Lessons Learned

Teachers from other disciplines can successfully offer CS classes (experience, willing to learn, enthusiastic)

Offering a high school level CS course supports accessibility (and provides equitable engaging experiences)

Need to work with guidance and administrators on CS diversity and participation, not just teachers

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Future Work

Schools whenever possible need more than 1 CS teacher so we plan on helping them increase their capacity

We plan to welcome more schools to our project

Future plans include working with 5 schools to achieve 60% of student body taking a foundational CS course, with demographics reflective of that of their schools

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Questions?

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