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The problem of the lack of rigor in CS education research has frequently been discussed and examined. Previous reviews of the literature have examined rigor on both theoretical and methodological dimensions, among others. These reviews have also looked at differences in indicators of rigor between conference proceedings and journal publications. However, to date there is no comprehensive review that has examined the intersection of methodological and theoretical quality. This paper reports results from a literature review in which we analyzed both the use of theory and methodological rigor of four years of CS education research from the Computer Science Education (CSE) journal and the proceedings of the International Computing Education Research (ICER) conference. The goal was to provide an updated and expanded picture of the methodological quality and use of theory in the most rigorous CS education publications, as well as to compare between conference proceedings and journal publications on these dimensions. Our focus was on research that draws upon learning theory from education, psychology and other disciplines outside CS education.The results of our review show a different picture than earlier reviews. Focus on empirical results in conference proceedings articles has surpassed that of journal publications, and empirical studies are significantly more likely to make use of theory from outside CS education. Overall, our analysis shows a significant increase in the proportion of articles drawing on theory from outside CS education, compared to earlier literature reviews, whereas indicators of methodological quality show no such change.

The initiatives to introduce Computer Science as a mandatory subject in K-12 in the U.S. (CSForAll), the U.K. (CAS), or Australia mean that thousands of new teachers will need to be trained both through inservice professional development and preservice teacher preparation. In order to examine the success of these efforts to train new computer science teachers requires computer science education researchers to evaluate the development of knowledge to teach computer science, i.e. pedagogical content knowledge. To date, we know little about how computer science pedagogical content knowledge looks like and how to assess it. This paper reports results from a qualitative analysis of computer science teachers' responses to teaching vignettes about students' understanding of programming constructs. The responses were evaluated using qualitative text analysis and commonalities are presented. In future research, the teachers' knowledge related to programming errors will be investigated on the basis of a survey developed from the answers of the presented study. CCS Concepts •Social and professional topics → Computing education;

Increasingly in K–12 schools, students are gaining access to computational thinking (CT) and computer science (CS). This access, however, is not always extended to students with disabilities. One way to increase CT and CS (CT/CS) exposure for students with disabilities is through preparing special education teachers to do so. In this study, researchers explore exposing special education preservice teachers to the ideas of CT/CS in the context of a mathematics methods course for students with disabilities or those at risk of disability. Through analyzing lesson plans and reflections from 31 preservice special education teachers, the researchers learned that overall emerging promise exists with regard to the limited exposure of preservice special education teachers to CT/CS in mathematics. Specifically, preservice teachers demonstrated the ability to include CT/CS in math lesson plans and showed understanding of how CT/CS might enhance instruction with students with disabilities via reflections on these lessons. The researchers, however, also found a need for increased experiences and opportunities for preservice special education teachers with CT/CS to more positively impact access for students with disabilities.