Department of Computer Science

This paper describes the development and implementation of a yearlong integrated English Language Arts (ELA) and computational thinking (CT) curriculum that has been adapted to meet the needs of multilingual students. The integration of computational thinking into K-12 literacy instruction has only been examined in a handful of studies, and little is known about how such integration supports the development of CT for multilingual students. We conducted a qualitative case study on curricular implementation in a general education classroom with large numbers of students designated as English learners. Results from detailed field notes revealed that the strategic application of instructional practices was implemented in the service of building on students' existing literacy skills to teach CT concepts and dispositions. The CT and literacy framework put forth in this study can be used as an analytic framework to highlight how instructional strategies mobilize the existing literacy and CT resources of linguistically diverse students. Based on our findings, we discuss recommendations for future integrated ELA-CT curricula.

Central to the theory of learning are inquiry-based approaches to education. Whereas there is a plethora of research on inquiry learning in the domain of science [19], [20], few studies have analyzed how inquiry-based learning can be applied to computer science education, and how different approaches to inquiry may benefit diverse learners. This is one of the first studies to analyze teacher enactment of inquiry-based learning during the implementation of an upper elementary, computational thinking curriculum, and to explore how teacher approaches to inquiry appear to support or constrain multilingual students' development of computational thinking and computer science identities. Design-based research was used to iteratively develop, test, and refine the inquiry-based curriculum, which aligns with computer science and literacy standards, provides linguistic scaffolding, and integrates culturally responsive materials. We adopt a cross-case mixed-methods design to collect data from five teachers and 149 students including detailed field notes, teacher interviews, student computational artifacts, and student identity surveys. Through analyses of teacher moves, we find that teachers adopt different approaches to inquiry that can be indexed along a continuum ranging from open to closed. Patterns in student data revealed that those who received more structured inquiry lessons developed more sophisticated computational artifacts and showed greater identification with the field of computer science. Findings from this study are being used to add more structured inquiry approaches to the next iteration of our curriculum, including integrating USE/MODIFY/CREATE models into lessons and applying metacognitive strategies from reading research to students' programming activities.

Today’s students will enter a workforce that is powerfully shaped by computing. To be successful in a changing economy, students must learn to think algorithmically and computationally, to solve problems with varying levels of abstraction. These computational thinking skills have become so integrated into social function as to represent fundamental literacies. However, computer science has not been widelytaught in K-12 schools. Efforts to create computer science standards and frameworks have yet to make their way into mandated course requirements. Despite a plethora of research on digital literacies, research on the role of computational thinking in the literature is sparse. This conceptual paper proposes a three dimensional framework for exploring the relationship between computational thinking and literacy through: 1) situating computational thinking in the literature as a literacy; 2) outlining mechanisms by which students’ existing literacy skills can be leveraged to foster computational thinking; and 3) elaborating ways in which computational thinking skills facilitate literacy development.

Computational thinking is an essential skill for full participation in society in today’s world (Wing, 2006). Yet there has been little discussion about the teaching and learning of computational thinking to English learners. In this paper, we first review what computational thinking is, why it is important in education, and the particular challenges faced in teaching computational thinking to speakers of English as a second language. We then discuss some approaches for addressing these challenges, giving examples from two recent K–12 initiatives in which we have been involved.