Thinking about Max Paper

Thinking about Max Paper THE TOPIC What’s the topic? This study is about a school’s process of developing a local implementation of a CS curriculum. It’s really about connecting theoretical questions about what is Computer Science to pragmatic questions about funding, staffing, curriculum, etc.

THE PROBLEM This is a case study of how those abstract questions play out in practice. We surface some recommendations for others going through a similar process.

WHY HAS THIS NOT BEEN ANSWERED? We have made substantial progress on defining what is important in computer science curricula, how it might be assessed, and strategies for effective teaching and learning in computer science, but we have few examples of how these bodies of research can be integrated in practice. Some large districts have designed CS programs, but there are few examples of individual schools or small districts who have done so.

HOW DID WE TACKLE THE RESEARCH QUESTION Rather than trying to answer these questions in the abstract, we studied how a real community worked through the issues.

HOW DID YOU DO THE RESEARCH? We conducted a case study of a committee in a small school district working to design a local vision for a computer science program, analyzing the summary documents generated by the committee and conducting interviews with members to understand the tensions behind the documents.

KEY IMPACT Designing a computer science program requires definitional choices that depend on local values. We summarize some of the central issues faced by this school and offer suggestions for other schools considering such a process.

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Some reflections on last night’s conversation with Chris Stephenson and Phillip Bell. Chris was the founding executive director of CSTA and former president of ISTE. Phillip is a former president of ISTE, and goes way back in the CS Ed space, form Oregon and Washington’s Northwest Computing Ed community, which merged with DEC (?).

I learned that ISTE was originally centrally focused on CS education, but that over time (80s, 90s) shifted toward a focus on educational technology. Now there is a big divide between ISTE, which pushed ed-tech and is interested in seeing programming integrated across the curriculum, and CSTA, which is interested in seeing CS as a core class.

Now apparently Code.org are a bunch of jerks; they’ve been very pushy and eating up whatever they can. They stole Jane Margolis’s ECS. There are rumors they’re trying to partner with ISTE and try to recruit CSTA’s members—perhaps on presumption that CSTA will fall apart. CSTA had severe mismanagement of money in the last couple of years, which was only discovered at last year’s SIGCSE conference. The previous director had been running a pyramid scheme, trying to hold things together by paying for one project with the next project’s money. The corporate funders were angry that their donations had been wasted; the ACM finally stepped in and allowed the director to retire and installed a board member loyal to them.

Given this landscape, what might be a productive contribution in this paper?

In the background, summarize academic efforts to define CS standards: the CSTA standards, the K-12 CS Framework, and state standards efforts. We will frame this as efforts to provide unified statements about what it is to do computer science.

Discuss source materials; ideas that have been kicking around since the 50’s.
Discuss CSTA standards, ACS standards, and K-12 CS Framework, tracing genealogy
Discuss efforts to frame computational thinking
Discuss teacher preparation standards?

Possibly discuss these with respect of TPCK, a school-of-education approach. Possibilities in developing CS TPCK, and what it might look like in a teacher preparation program!!!

First, I’m interested in trying to summarize the major disagreements. It makes sense to start with the local situation: going through interviews to get a sense of different peoples’ goals.

Discussion: What should we do? Are there ways to use a framework where local decisions are made about what to prioritize?

Is the K-12 CS Framework agnostic about whether CS should be a separate class?

“More than just a tool, computers are a readily accessible medium for creative and personal expression. In our digital age, computers are both the paint and the paintbrush. Computer science education creates the artists.”

“learning how to create with computers (i.e., computer science)” (10)

“Literacy provides a relevant context for understanding the need for computer science education. From a young age, students are taught how to read so that they can be in uenced by what has been written but also to write so that they can express ideas and in uence others. Although computing is a powerful medium like literacy, most students are taught only how to use (i.e., read) the works of computing provided to them, rather than to create (i.e., write) works for themselves.”

-> Send Max also David LAbaree’s paper.