A Research-Practice Partnership to Introduce Computer Science in Secondary School: Lessons from a Pilot Program

Abstract

Context Introducing Computer Science (CS) into formal education can be challenging, notably when considering the numerous stakeholders involved which include the students, teachers, schools, and policy makers. We believe these perspectives should be considered conjointly, which is possible within Research Practice Partnerships (RPPs). RPPs look to bridge research-practice gaps and have seen an increase in the field of education and CS-education. Unfortunately, RPPs are considered to be under-researched, in addition to presenting their own challenges. Objectives To the purpose of assessing how RPPs may support the successful introduction of CS into formal education, we investigate three perspectives (students, teachers, and RPP stakeholders) and their interplay within the context of a multi-institution RPP conducting a pilot program to introduce CS to secondary school students. Methods A mixed methods analysis was employed to triangulate data in a concurrent triangulation design. The data included i) 3 surveys distributed over the semester to 106 grade 9 students (ages 12-14), ii) four teacher-journals, iii) 2 interviews and 4 focus groups with the teachers and representatives of the partner institutions. Findings From the students’ perspective , while their self-efficacy increased, their motivation decreased throughout the semester due to a miss-match between their expectations and the course. The findings also indicate that gender biases and heterogeneity are already present in grade 9. From the teachers’ perspective , co-constructing the study plan, having access to regular support and collaborating within a community of practice when starting to teach CS all facilitated the teachers’ experience. Finally, from the RPP’s perspective the collaboration between stakeholders and having researchers evaluate the program were considered to be key elements in the pilot program. However, there appears to be a research-practice gap, in big part due to limited interactions between researchers and curriculum designers, and researchers and the teachers in the field. Conclusions From the students’ perspective it appears relevant to introduce CS i) prior to secondary school to address motivation and bias-related issues early on, and ii) to all students to avoid participation being motivation-, stereotype-, or belief-driven, and risk broadening the gap between students, iii) all the while being attentive to course format and content to ensure that the course meets students’ expectations and fosters autonomous motivation. From the teachers’ perspective , while the provided support met the teachers’ needs, it is essential to find means of scaling such approaches when looking to deploy CS-curricular reforms to entire administrative regions. Finally, from the RPP’s perspective i) teachers’ should be given a voice in the RPP to better align with the field, and ii) researchers’ roles should be reconsidered to move beyond being only evaluators, and towards having a more co-constructive role in setting up the curricular reform. Recommendations are provided for researchers and practitioners involved in CS curricular reforms.

A case for co-construction with teachers in curricular reform: Introducing computer science in primary school

“…Perceived utility and self-efficacy towards CS and tablets is however lower (negative impact). The latter may be indicative of a better understanding of what CS is, and the extent of the applications that are possible with tablets, contributing to more realistic expectations (Pantic et al, 2018) which are presently lacking in the region (El-Hamamsy et al, 2023a). As the results remain globally positive, these results appear promising for both CS and robotics as interest in the former, and interest, self-efficacy and perceived utility in the latter are key motivational factors that influence academic performance and career choices.…”

“…As gender-related stereotypes are prevalent, it is not surprising that numerous studies find that girls perceive CS more negatively than boys (El-Hamamsy et al, 2023a;Kong et al, 2018;Vandenberg et al, 2021;Witherspoon et al, 2016), contributing to a lower sense of belonging (Cheryan et al, 2013(Cheryan et al, , 2017Opps and Yadav, 2022;Vandenberg et al, 2021), self-efficacy (Beyer, 2014;Kong et al, 2018;Vandenberg et al, 2021), and interest (Beyer, 2014;Master et al, 2021). Provided the importance of such factors for academic achievement and career decisions (Bandura, 1993;Beyer, 2014;Howard et al, 2021a;Olivier et al, 2019), the consequence is that CS "suffers from the lowest participation of girls than other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects (Cheryan et al, 2017)" (Hinckle et al, 2020;Jiang and Wong, 2022).…”

“…While the initial focus was on student learning (see study 1 in section 3), a parallel pilot study in grade 9 (ages 13-14) in Spring 2021 indicated that there were already significant perception-related gender gaps (El-Hamamsy et al, 2023a). This lead to the introduction of a student perception survey in Fall 2021 (see study 2 and study 3 in sections 4, and 5) to determine when gender gaps appear and whether teaching CS contributes to closing these gaps.…”