Goals for CS Education include Getting Students In the Door and Supporting Alternative Endpoints

ACM Inroads has published an essay by Scott Portnoff “A New Pedagogy to Address the Unacknowledged Failure of American Secondary CS Education” (see link here). The Inroads editors made a mistake in labeling this an “article.” It’s an opinion or editorial (op-ed) piece. Portnoff presents a single perspective with little support for his sometimes derogatory claims. I have signed a letter to the editors making this argument.

Portnoff is disparaging towards a group of scholars that I admire and learn from: Joanna Goode, Jane Margolis, and Gail Chapman. He makes comments about them like “had CSEA educators been familiar with both CS education and the literature.” Obviously, they are familiar with the research literature. They are leading scholars in the field. Portnoff chides the CSEA educators for not knowing about the “Novice Programmer Failure problem” — which is a term that I believe he invented. It does not appear in the research literature that I can find.

In this blog, I want to try to get past his bluster and aggressive rhetoric. Let’s consider his argument seriously.

In the first part, he suggests that current approaches to secondary school CS education in the United States are failing. His measure of success is success rates on the Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles exam. He also talks about going on to succeed in other CS courses and about succeeding at industry internships, but he only offers data about AP CSP.

He sees the reason for the failure of US CS education in high school is that we have de-emphasized programming. He sees programming as being critical to success in the AP exams, in future CS classes, and in industry jobs. Without an emphasis on programming, we will likely continue to see low pass rates on the AP CS Principles exam among female and under-represented minority students.

In the second part, Portnoff lays out his vision for a curriculum that would address these failings and prepare students for success. He talks about using tools like CodingBat (see link here) so that students get enough practice to develop proficiency. He wants a return to a focus on programming.

What Portnoff misses that there is not consensus around a single point of failure or a set of goals about CS Education. In general, I agree with his approach for what he’s trying to do. I value the work of the CSEA educators because the problems that they’re addressing are harder ones that need more attention.

The biggest problem in US high school CS education is that almost nobody takes it. Less than 5% of US high school students attend any CS classes (see this blog post for numbers), and the students we currently have are overwhelmingly male, white/Asian, and from wealthier schools. Of course, we want students to succeed at the Advanced Placement exams, at further CS courses, and at industry jobs. But if we can’t get students in the door, the rest of that barely matters. It’s not hard to create high-quality education only for the most prepared students. Getting diverse students in the door is a different problem than preparing students for later success.

CSEA knows more about serving students in under-served communities than I do. They know more about how to frame CS in such a way that principals will accept it and teachers will teach it. That’s a critical need. We need more of that, and we probably need a wide range of approaches that achieve those goals.

A focus on programming is critical for later success in the areas that Portnoff describes. The latest research supporting that argument comes from Joanna Goode (as I described in this blog post), one of the educators Portnoff critiques. Joanna was co-author on a paper showing that AP CS A success is more likely to predict continuation in CS than AP CSP success. I’m also swayed by the Weston et al. article showing that learning to program led to greater retention among female students in the NCWIT Aspirations awards programs (see link here).

I also agree with Portnoff that learning to program requires getting enough practice to achieve some level of automaticity. CodingBat is one good way to achieve that. But that takes a lot of motivation to keep practicing that long and hard. We achieve reading literacy because there are so many cultural incentives to read. What will it take to achieve broad-based programming literacy, and not just among the most privileged? Portnoff tells us that his experience suggests that his approach will work. I’m not convinced — I think it might work with the most motivated students. He teaches in the same school district where the ExploringCS class was born. But Portnoff teaches in one of LAUSD’s premier magnet schools, which may mean that he is seeing a different set of students.

An important goal for CS Education is to get students in the door. I’m not sure that Portnoff agrees with that goal, but I think that many involved in CS education would. There is less consensus about the desired outcomes from CS education. I don’t think that CSEA has the same definition of success that Portnoff does. They care about getting diverse students to have their first experience with computer science. They care about students developing an interest, even an affinity for computing. They care more about creating a technically-informed citizenry than producing more software developers. Portnoff doesn’t speak to whether CSEA is achieving their desired outcomes. He only compares them to his goals which are about continuing on in CS.

There is a tension between preparing students for more CS (e.g., success in advanced classes and in jobs) and engaging and recruiting students. In a National Academy study group I’m working in, we talk about the tension between professional authenticity (being true to the industry) and personal authenticity (being personally motivating). The fact that so few students enroll in CS, even when it’s available in their school, is evidence that our current approaches aren’t attractive. They are not personally authentic. We need to make progress on both fronts, but considering how over-full undergraduate CS classes are today, figuring out the recruitment problem is the greater challenge to giving everyone equitable access to CS education.

I just learned about a new paper in Constructionism 2020 from David Weintrop, Nathan Holbert, and Mike Tissenbaum (see link here) that makes this point well, better than I can here. “Considering Alternative Endpoints: An Exploration in the Space of Computing Educations” suggests that we need to think about multiple goals for computing education, and we too often focus just on the software development role:

While many national efforts tend to deploy rhetoric elevating economic concerns alongside statements about creativity and human flourishing, the programs, software, curricula, and infrastructure being designed and implemented focus heavily on providing learners with the skills, practices, and mindset of the professional software developer. We contend that computing for all efforts must take the “for all” seriously and recognize that preparing every learner for a career as a software developer is neither realistic nor desirable. Instead, those working towards the goal of universal computing education should begin to consider alternative endpoints for learners after completing computing curricula that better reflect the plurality of ways the computing is impacting their current lives and their futures.

Guest Post by Joanna Goode: On CS for Each

I wrote a blog post recently about Joanna Goode promoting the goal of “CS for Each.”  Several commenters asked for more details.  I asked Joanna, and she wrote me this lovely, detailed explanation.  I share it here with her permission — thanks, Joanna!

To answer, we as CS educators want to purposefully design learning activities that build off of students’ local knowledge to teach particular computer science concepts or practices. Allowing for students to integrate their own cultural knowledge and social interests into their academic computational artifacts deepens learning and allows for students to develop personal relationships  with computing. More specifically, computer science courses lend themselves well for project-based learning, a more open-ended performance assessment that encourages student discretion in the design and implementation of a specified culminating project. Allowing students to use a graphical programming environment to create a Public Service Announcement of a topic of their choice, for example, is more engaging for most youth than a one-size-fits-all generic programming assignment with one “correct” answer.

Along with my colleagues Jane Margolis and Jean Ryoo, we recently wrote a piece for Educational Leadership (to be published later this year) that uses ExploringCS (ECS) to show how learning activities can be designed to draw on students’ local knowledge, cultural identity, and social interests. Here is an excerpt:

The ECS curriculum is rooted in research on science learning that shows that for traditionally underrepresented students, engagement and learning is deepened when the practices of the field are recreated in locally meaningful ways that blend youth social worlds with the world of science[.1]   Consider these ECS activities that draw on students’ local and cultural knowledge:

• In the first unit on Human-Computer Interaction, as students learn about internet searching, they conduct “scavenger hunts” for data about the demographics, income level, cultural assets, people, and educational opportunities in their communities.
• In the Problem-Solving unit, students work with Culturally-Situated Design Tools [2], a software program that “help students learn [math and computing] principles as they simulate the original artifacts, and develop their own creations.” In one of the designs on cornrow braids students learn about the history of this braiding tradition from Africa through the Middle Passage, the Civil Rights movement to contemporary popular culture, and how the making of the cornrows is based on transformational geometry.
• In the Web Design unit, students learn how to use html and css so they can create websites about any topic of their choosing, such as an ethical dilemma, their family tree, future career, or worldwide/community problems.
• In the Introduction to Programming unit, students design a computer program to create a game or an animated story about an issue of concern.
• In the Data Analysis and Computing unit, students collect and combine data about their own snacking behavior and learn how to analyze the data and compare it to large data sources.
• In the Robotics unit, students creatively program their robots to work through mazes or dance to students’ favorite songs.

Each ECS unit concludes with a culminating project that connects students’ social worlds to computer science concepts. For example, in unit two they connect their knowledge of problem solving, data collection and minimal spanning trees to create the shortest and least expensive route for showing tourists their favorite places in their neighborhoods.

[1] Barton, A.C. and Tan, E. 2010.  We be burnin’!  Agency, identity, and science learning.   The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 19, 2, 187-229.

[2] Eglash, Ron.  Culturally Situated Design Tools.  See: See: csdt.rpi.edu

New ExploringCS Working Paper: How do we avoid CS10K going to CS5K only five years later?

An important new working paper from the ExploringCS group asks the question: If we achieve CS10K, how do we avoid only having CS5K left after only five years?  This is exactly the question that Lijun Ni was exploring in her dissertation on CS teacher identity.

Of the 81 teachers who have participated in the ECS program over the last
five years, 40 are currently teaching ECS in LAUSD. These numbers reveal that we
have “lost” more teachers than we have “retained.” Of the 40 teachers who are
currently teaching the ECS course, 5 of them had a 1-2 year interval in which they
did not teach the course. This means that fully 45 of the 81 teachers who have
participated in the ECS program have experienced a teaching “disruption” which has
ended their participation in the ECS teacher community for a year or longer.

In particular, they ask us to consider the dangers of short-term fixes to long-term problems, which is a point I was trying to make when arguing that we may be 100 years behind other STEM subjects in terms of making our discipline-based education available to all.

In response to scaling up challenges, we can expect a rise of “quick-fix”
solutions that have a potential to undercut progress. One quick-fix “solution” to
address CS teacher shortage or the need for deepened teacher content knowledge
are programs that bring industry professionals to assist teachers in CS classrooms.
While we are interested in learning more about the outcomes of these programs,
because there can be value in students hearing from experts in the field, there are
also risks to having industry professionals take on a teaching role in the classroom
without professional development in effective and relevant pedagogy and belief
systems and equitable practices. Will industry professionals deliver content
knowledge the way they were taught, not having had experience working with the
novice learner? Will they focus on working with the students who think more like
they do, to the neglect of the other students? In short quick fixes like these may
inadvertently perpetuate the persistent divides in the field.

I add to their list of questions: Does bringing in IT professionals reduce the administrative pressure that pushes teachers out of CS?  Does it help to create the context and environment that supports CS teachers?

I used this working paper in my post this month for Blog@CACM.  Vint Cerf recently gave testimony in the Senate recommending a requirement for CS in all primary and secondary schools.  The ECS experience (and Lijun Ni’s work) point toward the need to create a supportive environment for CS teaching if we want to achieve Vint’s recommendation.

Highly recommended read.

Chicago Announces Comprehensive K-12 CS Program

The scope of the Chicago plan is impressive.  In case you thought that the idea of offering foreign language credit for CS was a joke, it’s being considered as part of the Chicago plan.  The rationale for the plan is interesting: Arguing that it’s about national competitiveness, and about democratization.

On the first day of Computer Science Education Week, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and CEO Barbara Byrd Bennett announced the most comprehensive K-12 computer science education plan in a major school district. This plan includes creating a pipeline for foundational computer science skills in elementary schools, offering at least one computer science class at every high school, and elevating computer science to a core subject.

“This plan will help us compete with countries like China and the UK, where children take coding classes in elementary school, and create an environment where we can help support the next Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Marissa Mayer,” said Mayor Emanuel. “By democratizing computer science, we are leveling the playing field for all children to have the same skills, appetite to learn, and access to technology to excel in this growing field.”

The K-12 program will expand student access to computer science literacy over the next five years. The program will include:

• In the next three years, every high school will offer a foundational “Exploring Computer Science” course.
• In the next five years, at least half of all high schools will also offer an AP Computer Science course.
• Chicago will also be the first US urban district to offer a K-8 computer science pathway, reaching one in four elementary schools in the next five years.
• Within five years, CPS will allow computer science to count as a graduation requirement (e.g. possibly as a math, science, or foreign language credit). Only thirteen other states have elevated computer science to a core subject instead of an elective.

via City of Chicago :: Mayor Emanuel And CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett Announce Comprehensive K-12 Computer Science Program For CPS Students.

Hadi Partovi teaches Ryan Secrest to code on the Today Show

This is pretty high visibility.  (Here’s the link if the embed below doesn’t work: http://www.today.com/id/26184891/vp/52630136#52630136.)

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