Background. The Standards for Computer Science (CS) Teachers include indicators related to classroom practices. To assess teacher proficiency related to these indicators at scale, we created and pilot-tested a vignette-based measure of K-5 CS teacher proficiencies related to Standards 2, 4, and 5. Research Questions. Our two research questions were: 1) How difficult did teachers find the new measure, and how effectively did each item discriminate between high- and low-performers? 2) Which teacher characteristics predict scores on the new measure? Methodology. We developed three vignettes and aligned associated questions to Standards 2, 4, and 5. We conducted cognitive interviews with teachers, then piloted the instrument with 111 U.S. K-5 teachers. Using classical test theory, we assessed its reliability and validity as well as each item's difficulty and discrimination values. Key Findings. Scores on the measurewere approximately normally distributed. Item difficulties ranged from.46 (somewhat difficult) to.95 (very easy). Item discrimination values ranged from.16 to.48. Cronbach's alpha (alpha =.66) indicated the measure could be improved to increase reliability. Scores on the measure were positively correlated with teachers' reported teaching awards, but were not predicted by any of the independent variables. Implications. This new measure of teacher proficiencies shows mixed psychometric qualities, and additional revisions to the items are warranted. Once finalized, this measure could potentially be used by practitioners to identify strengths and growth areas for future professional development.

Problem. Given the newness of the field, those who are assigned to teach computer science (CS) in K-12 schools need targeted professional development (PD) that supports their content and pedagogical content knowledge. Currently, a diagnostic tool does not exist to identify teacher needs, leaving teachers to self-select their PD or accept recommendations from a colleague or supervisor. Research Question. Our research question for this project was: How effective is a diagnostic tool for recommending areas of growth for teachers that are aligned with the CS Standards 2-5 for Teachers? Methodology. Our mixed-methods study included a diagnostic tool to analyze artifacts and justifications submitted by teachers and a self-assessment instrument measuring the frequency of specific practices connected to the CSTA Standards for Teachers. In this second year of testing the revised diagnostic tool, 66 teachers participated. After we trained 23 external reviewers to rate the submissions, we provided PD recommendations to teachers. Findings. Based on feedback from teachers, the diagnostic tool proved to be helpful in providing recommended PD for two-thirds of the teachers. The self-assessment instrument may have suffered from the Dunning-Kruger effect since many teachers rated themselves higher in all areas than in their submitted materials indicated. Implications. This paper provides the components of the diagnostic tool and examples of the self-assessment instrument. We detail the successes, the lessons learned, and future considerations that are needed to strengthen this diagnostic tool and self-assessment instrument in order to be more beneficial for recommending PD for teachers that are aligned with CSTA Standards for Teachers (2-5).

A well-established principle of Waldorf Education is that children’s development is compromised if we bring intellectual teaching too early. Waldorf teachers congratulate themselves that they wait until the seventh year to begin formal schooling, but according to the principles of child development out of which Waldorf Education arose, and on which much of our practice has been based for a hundred years, teaching children to read and write at seven is not ideal; they are still not ready. Convention and state expectations made it necessary in 1919, just as they do now, to introduce literacy teaching at an age not too far from what was generally considered normal, so a compromise was needed. Steiner suggested that, because physical development reaches a certain completion at seven, it is less harmful if we can wait until then. But according to Steiner, this is still a compromise: we cannot immediately unleash any kind of teaching scheme on children as soon as they reach their seventh year without doing any harm. According to modern teaching principles and methods, starting earlier means getting ahead; everything should be taught explicitly and systematically; and nothing can be left to develop of its own accord. Proponents of synthetic phonics refer to impressive research showing that it produces better results than other methods of teaching literacy, which is why it has been adopted so widely in mainstream education. However, the validity of this claim depends on what we mean by ‘better results’ and ‘literacy’. This paper explores these ideas.

The New Zealand Certificates of Steiner Education (CSE) are secondary qualifications at levels 1, 2 and 3, recognized by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority. They give access to tertiary education in New Zealand and beyond. The impulse for new qualifications grew from a wish to have important aspects of the taught Steiner curriculum recognized and valorized, that these aspects be credit bearing toward tertiary study, an option not offered by existing qualifications. The certificates were developed over an 18-month period and were implemented by the (then) four New Zealand Steiner schools with high school classes. The CSE are based on a suite of learning outcomes which give teachers a substantial degree of assessment autonomy, allowing them to tailor assessment modalities to the student or class being taught. Since 2012, the qualifications have been offered overseas and are now used as a pathway to university by Steiner schools in a growing number of countries. This article draws on the experiences of one of the developers of the qualification and two teachers in schools using the certificate in the UK, and outlines some of the challenges faced when breaking new ground in the advancement of Waldorf education internationally.

Professional learning programs for computer science (CS) teachers primarily rely on self-reported data from participants to understand the learning impact on teachers and improve teacher growth. We developed and piloted a set of standardized measures of teacher growth aligned with Standards 2-5 of the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) Standards for CS Teachers. We created a rubric from the 29 indicators across the four standards by merging similar concepts. We reduced these 29 indicators into 18 rubric items placed in one of three groups: Planning (9 items), Assessing (3 items), and Professional Development (6 items). We also created scales for measuring progress on each item based on the criteria for each standard. After creating an entry form based on the rubric items, we conducted a two-cycle pilot process, with teachers (n=24) completing the entry form and providing feedback in the form and in focus groups. We then applied revisions to the process, and conducted a second pilot with a different set of teachers (n=29). Teachers reported multiple ways to improve the process, including understanding their own growth path as a CS teacher. In this experience report, we describe the process of creating the rubric, the two-phase pilot used to gather feedback from the teachers, and the changes that we made to the rubric based on teacher feedback. We also provide a high-level description of the 18 items in the rubric, lessons learned, and recommendations.

The Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) Professional Development (PD) committee is responsible for curating a list of PD opportunities for dissemination to CS teachers. The committee developed and revised a research-based rubric and has used it to accredit PD programs that meet a baseline of quality. This paper reports on the process of accreditation and trends in CS teacher PD, as well as recommendations to PD providers based on trends in the data collected by the committee. This paper is a story of the evolution of the accreditation process and the tool used to measure quality PD. PD providers are encouraged to adopt best practices in supporting teacher growth.

This paper reports on the first year of teacher PD from an ongoing project designing to integrate computational thinking in middle school mathematics classrooms. The analysis investigates how teachers' prior dispositions toward programming influenced their behaviors in the PD. Two case studies illustrate that teachers' engagement and learning were affected not just by our designs, but also by the knowledge and beliefs teachers brought with them.

This paper examines a single case of an African American boy, Eric, who enrolled in a free week-long summer camp called Art and Coding. We consider how his participatory identity developed in relation to the design of tasks, the students and teachers with whom he interacted, and the tools that he leveraged. With the goal of better understanding the relationship between participation and the development of beliefs about oneself, we then connect our analyses with the students’ self-reflections in interviews. For Eric, a novice programmer whose passion is art, the experience of being positioned routinely as a knowledgeable explorer supported him to feel capable of resolving problems and attaining goals that he set for himself, even as he encountered challenges and frustration.

This symposium aims to explore current research working toward conceptualizing and measuring productive disciplinary engagement (PDE) contextualized in diverse learning and project contexts. Disciplinary engagement is critical for fostering students’ deep, integrated understanding of STEM content and disciplinary practices. However, there are significant challenges to reaching this engagement quality, with CSCL environments providing opportunities and supports for engagement, but also posing challenges. This symposium aims to account for recent developments, as presenters showcase rich range in exploring application of PDE in diverse domains, grade bands, and learning contexts. The presentations also showcase a range of methods to analyze PDE as collective, situated, cross-contextual, dynamic, and generative. This symposium aims to explore current research working toward conceptualizing and measuring productive disciplinary engagement (PDE) contextualized in diverse learning and project contexts. This topic is particularly relevant for computer-supported collaborative learning with its focus on coordinating efforts to build shared knowledge with the use of technology support (Roschelle, 2013). Consistent with the theme of the conference, we consider the complex ecosystems of collaborative learning that are embedded within disciplinary ideas and practices. Disciplinary engagement is critical for fostering students’ deep, integrated understanding of STEM content and disciplinary practices. Since the early days of reform-based curricula involving inquiry and problem solving, we have been aware that “sustaining the doing, supporting the learning” is necessary to reap the benefits of these challenging learning environments (Blumenfeld et al., 1991). That is, students need to engage in ways that translate their motivations into generative learning with benefits for a greater likelihood of transfer to subsequent educational and professional contexts. There are significant challenges to reaching this deep-level engagement, such as the necessity to coordinate joint activity during cognitively demanding tasks. CSCL environments provide opportunities and supports for engaging in these kinds of tasks, but can also pose challenges (Jeong & Hmelo-Silver, 2016). We draw from Engle & Conant’s (2002) definition of PDE as making collective intellectual progress related to core ideas and disciplinary practices during authentic tasks. PDE exemplifies developments in the learning sciences, including a situative view of engagement, as (1) negotiated and constructed in particular activity systems and (2) comprised of instructional opportunities that support and constrain engagement (Greeno, 2006). CSCL 2019 Proceedings 775 © ISLS This view of engagement significantly extends research which has been grounded in an individual difference paradigm and has been conceptualized as general sense making (e.g., Zimmerman, 1990). Thus, these developments advance engagement as embedded within domain-specific and disciplinary contexts, and central to and inseparable from learning (Gresalfi, et al., 2009). Here, the quality of collective persistence in the face of challenge, positive affect and interest in the ideas and doing of activity, and interpersonal interactions while making meaningful connections is central to what students come to understand; highlighting the various interdependencies of learning processes, a central aim of CSCL research. Now 15 years after the introduction of PDE, this symposium aims to present the frontiers of the research and account for developments, as the presentations examine PDE in a range of CSCL environments. We strive to build on a literature which has been limited to a focus on definition within single and illustrative cases to broaden the analytic and empirical landscape. Toward that end, we bring together four research groups showcasing rich range in exploring application of PDE in diverse domains (science, mathematics, engineering, educational psychology), grade bands (middle school through University) and learning contexts (after school programs, inquiry and problem solving curricula, online CSCL, as well as across resources and contexts). The presentations also showcase a range of methods to analyze PDE as collective, situated, cross-contextual, dynamic, and generative. Each presenter will introduce their (1) guiding framework for theorizing collective PDE, as contextualized in particular tasks, domains, instructional settings and disciplinary practices; (2) observable indicators of disciplinary engagement in the collective; and (3) analytic foci, making explicit the affordances of rich analysis for understanding collective engagement. As called for in the CSCL 2019 theme, these varied efforts to foster and study PDE have been carried out in contexts that are intended to support embodied, enactive, extended, and/or embedded CSCL. First, Gresalfi and her colleagues investigate the role of design features, alongside teachers and peers as relational resources, for jointly fostering persistence in the face of challenge for children in a computer science camp e on , am a an a onen consider the interrelationships of engagement dimensions for within and between group interactions during software engineering courses. Using social network analysis alongside qualitative content analysis, they track the change in density and the nature of collaborative engagement, among dimensions, over time. Next, Rogat and colleagues showcase their theoretical framework instantiated in a rubric using quality ratings to examine five dimensions of PDE during collaborative group exchanges, to contrast two case groups during a common collaborative task across two time segments. Subsequently, Hickey and colleagues extend the PDE design framework to be inclusive of expansive framing, by which learners engage with conceptual and disciplinary material in terms of their own personal and cultural orientations within three different undergraduate and graduate online CSCL contexts. Finally, our discussant addresses how these papers have collectively advanced what we understand about PDE within CSCL contexts. Same place, new rules: The joint accomplishment of engagement Melissa Gresalfi, Amanda Bell, Corey Brady, and Lauren Vogelstein We face a documented shortage of computer scientists. By 2024, 1.1 million jobs are predicted in computing fields (Lockard & Wolf, 2012), but in 2015, fewer than 17,000 people graduated with computer science-related degrees; of those, fewer than 3,000 were women. Just 7% of workers in computing in 2014 identified as Black and 7% as Hispanic (Beckhusen, 2016). Clearly, the challenge we face is not only to encourage more people to engage in computing, but also to ensure that the diversity of our community is reflected in the field. To address this challenge, many suggest introducing students to Computer Science (CS) well before college. However, bringing computational thinking (CT) into K-12 contexts comes with its own potential challenges. Without careful attention to pedagogy and design, we might ultimately teach computational thinking in schools in ways that exacerbate current trends, contributing to the same K-12 participation gaps in interest and identity that we see in other STEM related fields. Thus, it is imperative that we look to the lessons learned about designing for equitable participation in these other fields as we seek to understand how to connect CS to K-12 contexts. Research on students’ mathematics learning has demonstrated how different designs support different forms of knowing. These same studies have established that the patterns we associate with who is good at math and who wants to persist at mathematics is as much a function of the way mathematics is taught than of mathematics itself. This is not to say that the field of mathematics has solved the problem of participation—quite to the contrary (Martin, Gholson, & Leonard, 2010). However, when we look at classrooms that reorganize the teaching of mathematics so that engaging the discipline is more than remembering facts and answering questions quickly, we find that very different patterns in interest and engagement emerge (Boaler & Greeno, 2000; Boaler & Staples, 2008). In contrast, a fast-paced, competitive environment turns off many students from the discipline. It would be easy for this very same scenario happening with respect to Computational Thinking as so much of CT content might reasonably be organized into a set of facts and rules to be taught and practiced. CSCL 2019 Proceedings 776 © ISLS However, CT also involves practices of design (Kafai, 2016) that requires the understanding and principled adaptation of underlying facts and rules. Teaching students a set of rules that can then be applied is the version of teaching that is popular (and largely unsuccessful) in math classrooms; teaching students a set of design practices that create a need for CT concepts is a version of teaching that is being explored, with success, in math classrooms. This study seeks to better understand how to support rich engagement with CT through the design of activities that leverage programming as a means of enacting expressive visual displays and effects. We conceptualize engagement as a collective act between person and context, seen as an interplay between the affordances of a learning environment and whether and how students act on those affordances. In previous work (Gresalfi, 2015; Gresalfi & Barab, 2011) we distinguished between different forms of agency that primarily focus on following rules and procedures, from more productive disciplinary engagement (Engle & Conant, 2002), which we see as involving consequential engagement (considering the implications of disciplinary decisions) and critical engagement (using those consequences to make decisions about how to best solve problems). In prior work, we have focused on the role of tasks in suppo

: Systems thinking (ST) is an important skill for making sense of the complex systems in our world. This design-based research study tested conjectures around students’ understanding of ST in elementary grades. We tested how students learn ST skills through designing and playing digital and board games. We looked for students to identify components of a system, describe interconnections, and explain how those interconnections affect the outcomes of the overall system. We discuss changes to our designs and conjectures over two large design cycles. We hope findings from this study can inform research examining how games support the development of ST and other critical thinking skills.

Digital games have demonstrated great potential for supporting students’ learning across disciplines. But integrating games into instruction is challenging and requires teachers to shift instructional practices. One factor that contributes to the successful use of games in a classroom is teachers’ experience implementing the technologies. But how does experience with a game actually affect teacher practice? We explored these issues by comparing years 1 and 2 of a middle-school mathematics teacher’s use of Boone’s Meadow, a digital problem-solving game around ratio and proportion, in her classroom. While the two implementations were quite similar, the teacher was able to give more problem solving agency to students and use students’ gameplay time much more productively in the second year, both for mathematical engagement and for immersing students in the narrative of the game. Findings point to the importance of considering the teacher’s role when designing digital games for learning.

Complex systems are difficult for many students to understand. But new technologies are promising tools for helping students learn about systems thinking. In this paper, I present a case study of a middle school student creating stories in Scratch to learn about programming and complex systems. I discuss his learning in relation to the affordances of the Scratch activities and the student's abilities and goals. Results show that while the student did learn about programming, the linearity of stories in Scratch did not afford opportunities for learning about interconnections in complex systems.