Collaborative Research: RAPID: CS-NYCE: An Ecological Approach to Understanding the Rollout of Student-Centered Computer Science Education in New York City

University Of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI

Investigators

Abstract

The University of Wisconsin-Madison, in collaboration with the Teachers College at Columbia University, and Georgia Institute of Technology, proposes to study core questions around the design and implementation of the rollout of Computer Science for All (CS4All) in diverse New York City (NYC) communities. NYC is currently beginning the largest rollout of computer science (CS) education in the history of the United States, and one of the largest scaled rollouts of a new academic subject for American public high school students in decades. The CS4All initiative provides an important opportunity to evaluate the affordances and impact of K-12 CS curricula and pedagogies in highly diverse settings at a scale rarely possible. Research around this initiative could not only directly impact CS education for thousands of NYC students, but could also ensure a more equitable blueprint for the rest of the nation as President Obama's newly announced, national CS for All Initiative scales. Though the NYC CS4All project was just announced this year, it is already being deployed across the city in diverse communities and schools that have not previously had any formal computer science or engineering education. As of yet, we know very little about how it is working, or will work, in NYC. Using qualitative grounded theory, mixing interviews, observations, and field notes, we plan to study core questions around the design and implementation of CS curricula in diverse NYC communities: What are the challenges in implementing CS education (with embedded student-centered pedagogies) across NYC? What are the practical roles of the stakeholders in curriculum design, rollout, and uptake for new CS classrooms? What are the goals/values driving administrators and other stakeholders decisions around which CS curricula to adopt, and how are they communicating these goals/values to teachers, students, and their broader community? The research will provide empirical, targeted, and useful research findings for the scaling up of CS classes across NYC and perform basic research that is only possible in this extraordinary, unique, imminent context. To provide such research findings on the accelerated timeline of the rollout requires relatively quick movement on all research endeavors.