The Teacher Accessibility, Equity, and Content (TEC) Rubric for Evaluating Computing Curricula

Abstract

In response to the growing call to bring the powerful ideas of computer science to all learners, education decision makers, including teachers and administrators, are tasked with making consequential decisions on what curricula to use. Often, these decision makers have not been trained in computer science and are unfamiliar with the concepts taught and tools used. This is especially true in K–12 contexts where computer science expertise is less prevalent. To aid in the decision-making process around computing curricula, this article introduces the TEC Rubric. The TEC Rubric is composed of three main categories: Teacher Accessibility, Equity, and Content designed to support educational decision makers and designers when it comes to computing instruction. Along with presenting the full rubric and the process used in its creation, this article describes two examples of the rubric in action. First, the TEC Rubric is used to evaluate two widespread computer science curricula to demonstrate its evaluative capacity highlighting differences between the two curricula. Second, we show how the TEC Rubric can be used to help inform the design of new K–12 computing curricula. Overall, the TEC Rubric is designed to serve as a useful resource in the ongoing quest to bring effective, equitable, and engaging computing instruction into schools around the world.

Finnish teachers’ and students’ programming motivation and their role in teaching and learning computational thinking

“…For students, programming motivation is on average comparably high among students who have programmed previously and boys whereas students who have not programmed previously and girls have comparably low programming motivation. It appears especially important to consider how to promote especially teachers' intrinsic programming motivation and girls' programming motivation generally, although other as or more important factors influencing teachers' CT instruction and students' CT learning may include teachers' skills (Mäkitalo et al, 2019;Kong et al, 2020), available resources (Weintrop et al, 2019) and time (Waite et al, 2020), the amount or quality of instruction and learning experiences and learning activities (Lye and Koh, 2014;Sun et al, 2022), and even students' personality traits (Román-González et al, 2017).…”

“…Future teacher training and research should thus also critically and meticulously consider teachers' subject and pedagogical content knowledge in CT (see Mäkitalo et al, 2019;Kong et al, 2020). Additionally, the availability of teaching materials and assessment practices (Weintrop et al, 2019) and even such mundane factors as time for lesson planning (Waite et al, 2020), time in the syllabus, and time altogether for professional development are important, turning focus also into school resources and school leaders' decision-making. Illustratively, in Finland, only 58% of school principals rated the educational outcome of developing students' skills to write apps or programs as quite important or very important (Strietholt et al, 2021, p. 28), showing that nearly a half of school principals do not perceive students' programming skills as important educational outcomes.…”

“…Active participation in training and high quality of instruction, in turn, promotes students' learning outcomes (Gorozidis and Papaioannou, 2014). Although teaching and learning practices in schools can naturally be regulated by such key factors as teacher's expectations and knowledge (Kong et al, 2020), available resources (Weintrop et al, 2019), and available time for pedagogical planning (Waite et al, 2020), Finnish students' exposure to CT in basic education may have relied partly on the efforts of teachers who have been motivated for programming. It is possible that such teachers are especially those who teach "STEAM" (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics) subjects, which have been traditionally affiliated with CT and programming education (see e.g., Mäkitalo et al, 2019).…”

Investigating block programming tools in high school to support Education 4.0: A Systematic Mapping Study

“…In addition, in this SLR, the authors did not focus on tools that were used in High School, and perhaps because of this, they identified a lot of programming tools in blocks. Weintrop et al (2019) present a study carried out with the TEC Rubric tool, developed to assist in decision making in Computer Science (CS) curricula in grades K-12 (Elementary and High School). Weintrop et al (2019) realized the need to support teachers to make CS content more accessible.…”

“…Weintrop et al (2019) present a study carried out with the TEC Rubric tool, developed to assist in decision making in Computer Science (CS) curricula in grades K-12 (Elementary and High School). Weintrop et al (2019) realized the need to support teachers to make CS content more accessible. In this sense, the authors carried out an SLR that served as the basis for composing the TEC Rubric, focusing on: (a) Teacher Accessibility, (b) Equity (creation of effective and accessible learning opportunities), and (c) Content, which is intended for use by two profiles: for teachers, it covers educational decisions; and, for designers, it involves creating effective, accessible and equitable learning opportunities.…”