Investigating Teacher Perspectives of Data Privacy Related to Computer Science Professional Development

• In Event: Promoting Equitable CS and AI Education: Strategies to Expand Capacity and Access

Abstract

Objectives or Purpose
Supporting teacher capacity to attend computer science (CS) professional development (PD) is critical to ensure high quality instruction is provided to all students. Moreover, providing a convenient and accurate method to track CS teachers’ PD participation is important to teachers’ professional advancement and program provider’s continuous improvement. Several organizations have partnered to develop a PD Passport for CS teachers, a centralized location for tracking their PD which automatically uploads and validates their PD completion certificates, and related background characteristic data provided by Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) and PD partners. The purpose of this study was to ascertain which information security-related features, data, and actions were important to teachers within an online platform. This inquiry is particularly relevant for teacher usage of a PD tacking platform given divergent socio-political environments of states and districts which hold varying perspectives on participation in PL related to topics such as culturally relevant instruction and broadening participation in STEM.

Perspective(s) or Theoretical Framework
While research exists on what data should be protected, there is a dearth of research (and theory) on what teachers in particular want in systems that will protect their data. We sought to fill this gap and understand what builds trust in a platform for teachers’ data.

Method and Data Sources
To ensure the PD Passport meets teachers' needs for data privacy, we conducted an explanatory mixed methods study with a qualitative study to investigate teachers' (n=18) data privacy concerns, particularly when it comes to PD. We then created a survey and collected data from 801 PreK-12 CS teachers in the U.S.
Participants in the interviews were purposefully selected from a screening questionnaire completed by CSTA members. Data sources included interview transcripts and researcher notes. From the qualitative results, we generated survey items related to trust or distrust in a platform.

Results
Several interviewees confirmed that they would not want their administration, parents, or school board members to know that they attended equity-focused PD. Over 25% of survey respondents experienced breaches of both student and teacher data at their school or district. On a 7-point Likert scale (7=greatly build trust, and 1=not build my trust at all), teachers requested transparency about who has access to their data in a PD tracking platform (M=6.59, SD=0.79). They also highly valued being asked for explicit consent before their information is shared and desired control over who their data is shared with. They highly distrusted systems that do not provide transparency about data breaches. Notably, teachers also distrusted platforms that use their data to train AI models without clear consent (M=6.33, SD=1.14, 7=greatly reduce trust and 1=not reduce trust at all).

Scholarly Significance
Compromised PD data could have negative consequences on teachers. As the PD Passport features are built, the developers can align the system to meet the specific needs of teachers to keep their data safe and encourage on-going use. Future researchers and developers may leverage these results to further investigate influences on teacher trust of online platforms and data collection.

Authors

• Joseph C. Tise, Institute for Advancing Computing Education

• Monica McGill, Institute for Advancing Computing Education

• Robert Schwarzhaupt, American Institutes for Research