Professional Development for Culturally Relevant Education in K–12 Computer Science: Evidence From New York City

• In Event: Identifying and Meeting the Needs of the Expanding Computer Science Teaching Force

Abstract

Objectives:
Developing their students’ computational thinking (CT) skills is a large part of the work that K-12 computer science (CS) teachers do. However, this work is not straightforward—it requires helping students ask questions about power and privilege (e.g., “Who is considered in the design and implementation of technology we use on a daily basis?”) as well as the uneven distribution of that power and privilege (e.g., Eglash et al., 2013; Lachney et al., 2021).

To help teachers do this work better, it is important to shift their practice towards culturally relevant education. This paper documents and assesses the efforts of New York City’s Computer Science for All team to provide CS teachers with the knowledge and skills to adopt culturally relevant educational practices in their classrooms.

Perspectives:
Our work is shaped by two perspectives. First, we follow other researchers (e.g., Aronson & Laughter, 2019; Parkhouse et al., 2022) in combining the literature and practices from culturally responsive teaching (Gay, 2010) and culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995) into a framework called culturally relevant education (CRE).

Second, we find that much of the existing work on integrating CRE into CS instruction is theoretical (Participant, yearf) or not generalizable to diverse groups of teachers and students (Morales-Chicas et al., 2019). To fill this gap, we develop a professional development (PD) series, “Exploring Equity in Computer Science” (EECS). In line with the conference theme, this PD was developed as a collaboration between educators and researchers. It includes anti-racism training to foster individual introspection and institutional change along with guidance on pedagogical practices teachers can implement into their classrooms.

Data sources:
We follow the first cohort of teachers (N=35) who have progressed through the EECS PD series (EECS, 2022) offered by NYC’s CS4All team. We draw on longitudinal post-PD survey data submitted by this group: Teachers were surveyed multiple times during the summer 2020 PD sessions and, subsequently, on an almost monthly basis during their PD participation over the course of the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 academic years.

Methods:
We conduct descriptive analyses of two types in this paper: We quantitatively examine shifts in teachers’ beliefs and reported practices over time. We also conduct a content analysis of the qualitative data, identifying specific practices that teachers identify as helpful to their development as culturally relevant educators.

Results:
The quantitative analyses indicate shifts in teachers’ beliefs and reported practices over time. For instance, in April 2021, 58% of teachers reported that they had useful tools to implement a CS vision for their school; this increases to 67% in April 2022. The qualitative data highlight that important supports for teachers include their accountability partners, opportunities for reflection, and collaborations in small groups.

Significance:
Conducted as a collaboration between practitioners and researchers, this study aims to build the evidence base on the ways in which PD supports teachers’ development of CRE in their CS classrooms. In doing so, we hope to deepen conceptualizations of culturally relevant education in sharpening students’ CT knowledge and practices.

Authors

• Zitsi Mirakhur, University of Kentucky
  Presenting Author

• Christy Crawford, New York City Public Schools
  Non-Presenting Author