Dive Brief:
- Attitudes toward computer science — among elementary school students in particular — and confidence in the subject improved greatly among girls and Black and Latinx students when the curriculum was paired with culturally responsive education, according to a report from the Research Alliance for New York City Schools.
- The report, released last month, also showed that high schoolers who take computer science courses are twice as likely to major in the topic when attending New York City's public university system. That percentage more than doubles for women, Black and Latinx students.
- New York City tripled the number of schools offering computer science education to 45% by the 2022-23 school year through its Computer Science for All Initiative launched in 2015, the alliance found in an earlier study.
Dive Insight:
The latest report examined whether CS4All improved attitudes, beliefs, confidence and a sense of belonging, said Cheri Fancsali, executive director at the New York University-based Research Alliance, which is the external evaluator for CS4All. The program was designed to expand students' technology skills while boosting exposure and inclusiveness in computer science.
“Do they see themselves as individuals who can and should participate" in computer science? Did this program "improve their interest and engagement?” asked Fancsali, a co-author of the report. “We did see modest shifts in attitudes, particularly in elementary students, which isn’t surprising. Elementary students are generally more positive around STEM disciplines, broadly.”
The report also showed statistically significant improvements in computational thinking skills from the beginning to the end of the school year, again particularly in elementary grades, Fancsali said.
The implementation of culturally responsive practices includes such things as highlighting the contributions of prominent female, Black and Latinx computer science trailblazers, or discussing possible biases embedded in algorithms. These practices, the report showed, improved attitudes more greatly among those demographics.
That relationship, Fancsali said, speaks to the importance of “addressing some of the more structural and social barriers to students being interested in and engaging in computer science education.”
That trend continued when looking at those choosing computer science as a major, Fancsali added. “The promising link between culturally responsive practices and students’ attitudes points to the need to continue to think about how to best foster that, how to support teachers in providing culturally responsive computer science education.”
Elementary school teachers were much more successful offering computer science by integrating it into other subject areas than teachers in middle and high school, who mostly lead single-subject courses and have less wiggle room in the curriculum, especially in math and science, Fancsali said. Superintendents and principals should support teachers in how to integrate computer science into their courses as much as possible, she said.
Going forward, Fancsali and her colleagues hope to dig deeper into many of these findings, especially around culturally responsive computer science education.
“It really addresses some of the inequities that you see in students’ participation and achievement in computing that’s not going to be addressed just by offering more classes,” she said. “The instruction itself needs to be different and take into account students’ backgrounds.”
On the national level, a recent collaboration forged between Code.org and CSforALL — two organizations that focus on issues like teacher preparation, district networks, student learning, community development and policy advocacy — is aligned with the work of New York City’s CS4All. Despite the extreme similarity between their names, the New York City initiative is not affiliated with CSforALL, according to Karim Meghji, chief product officer at Code.org.
Their combined efforts have three goals: building a vision among state and district level administrators as to what outcomes they want from computer science education, creating effective teacher professional development that deepens their understanding, and bringing the curriculum into the classroom in an inclusive way, Meghji said. Where CSforAll has focused more on state and district leaders, he said, Code.org’s work has drilled down to the classroom.
“The combination results in better access and more inclusive implementation,” Meghji said. “That sum total is what we’re trying to drive as outcomes.”
