The chapter presents the authors’ views on the goals for teaching programming. But these may vary (slightly or significantly :)) for each of us as teachers, or rather, we may want to focus on some more than others.
Reflect on/discuss your primary (and secondary) goals for teaching CS. What were your first experiences or ideas of computing, and how did they shape your early perceptions of computer science? To what extent have these perceptions changed today, and how might they impact your approach to teaching computer science?
How do the affordances of coding shared here align with the learning goals of programming share in this chapter?
How does teaching programming and CS depending on how we frame our learning goals?
For example, what if workforce development was seen as a key goal for teaching CS (as we often hear).
What if we made racial equality and racial justice as the primary goal?
Stories of women and women of color (or other minoritized groups) in computing can be a powerful way of motivating them and/or preparing them for the field.
In this blog post, former highschool CS teacher Alfred Thompson recommends two such books-
What are some books you would recommend to students from minoritized groups?
Activity – Using ideas from this and other related chapters, expand on how you would implement some suggestions from Figure 7 (p. 123) in your classroom context.
Contributed by Dr. Christine Liebe (CSTeach Course at Colorado School of Mines)
How can you help students remember to adopt a growth mindset and “fail forward”?
What ways could students safely celebrate their successes regularly in your classroom?
How can you help students access and/or learn humor to support their growing identity as CS learners?How can K-12 CS curriculum prepare students for technological requirements in the coming decades?
What is essential K-12 CS knowledge that will help students with new levels of abstraction such as, AI search & report applications and AI programming assistants?
How can you help students learn to evaluate the impacts of their technological solutions on multiple dimensions of human life, e.g., the personal, family, organization, local, geographical area, country, international, mental/emotional, environmental?
How might service-learning projects aid students in developing successful learning beliefs and attitudes?
Do you work with CS teacher mentors who might help you increase your own CS teaching self-efficacy? Where might you meet a CS teacher mentor?
How do you bounce back when a CS lesson fails? How do you celebrate your successes as a CS teacher?
Other contributions
(A-Z Handbook #CSK8 Twitter Chat moderated by Vicky Sedgwick) How do you establish a safe and supportive classroom culture so that students feel comfortable to share their work, persist when encountering bugs in programs, and ask questions or volunteer answers in front of peers?
(#CSK8 Twitter Chat moderated by Vicky Sedgwick) Our physical spaces impact what it is possible to do in our classes and how included our students feel in our classes. What does your classroom look like? Please share pictures (or a description) of your classroom space.
(Contributed by Dr. Amy Ko) The chapter touches on issues of inclusivity
(of lack thereof) and bias in computing. But there are broader problems
with neutrality in computation, as well. How can we address the issue
that computation itself is not neutral? That code often centralizes
power, it dehumanizes process, and it encodes discrimination, in
addition to bias, in subtle but destructive ways. What examples show
these not-so-benevolent roles that computing play in society? How can we
encourage a more critical interrogation of computing in classrooms?
Interactively Explore the Learning Objectives of the ACM CS2013 Computing Curriculum A web site designed by Matthias Hauswirth’s lab for their teacher training activities— to allow teachers and curriculum developers to easily browse, search, and subset the hundreds of learning outcomes described in the ACM CS2013 curriculum.
