Interested In Class, But Not In The Hallway: A Latent Class Analysis (LCA) of 2015-16 CS4All Student Surveys
In this episode I unpack Graves and DeLyser’s (2017) article titled “Interested In Class, But Not In The Hallway: A Latent Class Analysis (LCA) of 2015-16 CS4All Student Surveys,” which highlights that although many of the 1,525 survey respondents expressed an interest in computer science in the classroom settings, they did not choose to engage in CS outside of the classroom.
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Welcome back to another episode of the
CSK8 podcast my name is jared o'leary
in this week's episode i'm going to be
unpacking some scholarship in particular
i'm unpacking the paper titled
interested in class but not in the
hallway colon
a latent class analysis lca of 2015 to
cs for all student surveys and this
paper is written by
kenneth graves and leanne delizer and as
always you can find in the show notes a
link directly to
this paper as well as links to the
author google scholar profiles of any
scholars works that i unpack in this
particular podcast
you can find them by clicking the link
in the app that you're listening to this
on or simply going to jaredoleary.com
and then clicking on the show notes for
this particular episode
alright so here's the abstract for this
paper quote
computer science cs education
initiatives often use measures of
interest to assess outcomes
although appropriate for initiatives
meant to encourage future participation
these measures do not always align with
the complex nature of interest
as described by the learning sciences
literature or recognize the
reality that school related initiatives
aimed at student engagement in cs
will not produce individual interests in
every student
in this paper we present a review of the
interest literature
and data from a survey with evidence of
validity of
over 1500 students in various cs courses
in new york city
by using latent class analysis lca we
identify
five different statistically significant
subgroups of cs students
one enthusiast two engaged
three bookish four idlers
and five disinterested our finding
suggests that while some students enjoy
cs in class and feel their teacher is
pedagogically effective
they may not develop the individual
interests characterized by seeking
additional learning opportunities
outside of class end quote better
summarize this into a one sentence
summary i would say that this paper
highlights
that although many of the 1525 survey
respondents
expressed an interest in computer
science in the classroom setting
they did not choose to engage in cs
outside of the classroom
all right so this paper was written in
they were saying that there's a lot of
cs initiatives going on in k12 education
in the united states and this is great
and we're integrating with like content
areas like math and science et cetera et
cetera
and the cs discourse is often quoting
like a large number of available jobs in
the profession that require
some cs or computing skills however the
authors note that quote
these initiatives have struggled to find
common assessments or outcomes for all
students end quote that's on page 243
in particular the authors note that
there are basically like two different
types of categories of
assessments of cs implementations so one
is on content
and the other is on attitudes now in
this paper they're focusing specifically
on attitudes
of quote student self-report surveys of
interest
engagement teacher pedagogical
effectiveness and teacher expectations
and rigor
end quote on page 243 okay so the
literature reviews section of this paper
is broken down into two different
sections
one is on the assessments of student
attitudes specifically in cs education
and then the other section is just on
interest research in educational
settings at large
now in the section on student attitudes
in cs education the authors note that
there are very few studies that actually
use validated assessments
when looking at students attitudes in
computer science education
so here's a quote from page 244
quote although interest is often used as
a singular descriptor for cs education
outcomes research shows that it is
actually a complex state
impacted both by intrinsic values of
students
and contextual priming that can catch
students interest
in quote so while students might be
individually interested
in something they can also be
situationally interested in something
depending on what kind of environment or
context
they are in so for example if a student
comes into a computer science class
and already knows about the value of
using coding or computer science to
create some awesome things they might be
intrinsically or individually interested
in it
however if they are mandated to be in a
coding or cs class
and they realize that oh i can make
games with this they might be
situationally interested in learning how
to code or engage in computer science
because they're already interested in
games and they're put into this
environment that kind of prompts us
situational interest
in coding or cs so the author suggests
that in cs education
in the courses and curricula we need to
actually not only
go for situational interest but also
trigger individual interest in the
subject area
so they summarize an approach for this
it's a four-phase model
for developing that kind of interest so
the first phase
is to develop some kind of a situational
interest in it so like i mentioned
if a student's really interested in
games you can start there and be like
cool you're interested in games well
let's learn how to make one
now over time this kind of initial
situational interest
may motivate kids to have sustained
situational
interest engaging in computer science so
you might have that initial hook
that can then build into longer
sustained engagement
within the class that you're working on
so for example if you start with gaming
and then you have another unit that goes
into something like storytelling
a student might continue that interest
because they started with learning how
to
create video games with code and then
they're transferring that interest over
into another context
so it kind of sustains their interest in
it then the goal would be to
not just have sustained situational
interest but make it so that students
are individually interested or
intrinsically interested in the class
that you're working on
so how do you go from that initial hook
and then get it so that a student wants
to continue their learning when they
leave the class
and that's kind of the big thing the big
question that
i think most educators should try and
think through when engaging in the
classroom
is how can i get it so that kids are so
interested in this subject area
that they don't want to just learn the
subject area to get a good grade but
they want to
actually learn it to apply it and
continue to learn in their own life
however i say that with a caveat that
not every subject is going to
have that kind of impact on every single
kid so
for example for me i was very much so
interested in music
and the arts when i was in school and i
really didn't care about most other
subjects even if it was a fantastic
educator
and i enjoyed what i was doing i didn't
want to go home and learn it but i did
however want to go home and learn
to make music so although it's an ideal
i understand
not everyone is going to be 100 as
invested in computer science or coding
as i am or you might be but we can at
least strive for that
or at least attempt to and as an example
from
page 244 of this paper the authors
mentioned that going from that
situational to individual interest
and getting kids to want to continue
learning outside of your classroom
setting it might be
something as simple as joining a club on
the topic so if you have an after school
coding or cs club or makerspace or
something
getting them into that or even just like
going home
and working on scratch at home just to
create a project for fun outside of
a school-based assignment or something
and if i could add like one suggestion
in there
try and find ways to celebrate when
students do that encourage that and let
others know that oh yeah you can take
this home and the reason why i'm saying
this is because
whenever a kid would come in and be like
hey look at this cool thing i made over
the weekend
i would share it with the rest of the
class and some of the students would be
like wait you mean we can work on
scratch at home and be like
yes of course if you're interested in
learning how to keep coding
then why stop here so even though it
might sound obvious for us
it seriously happened in several of my
classes where kids
all of a sudden had this epiphany that
light bulb moment
where they went oh i can actually
continue my learning at home
so make it explicit now the question
that kind of guides this particular
study itself is quote to what extent are
there different types of nyc
cs students who participated in cs for
all during the 2015-2016 school year end
quote
on page 244. now this question gets at
what i was kind of
mentioning earlier so we have a
range of kids who are going to be coming
into the cs or coding classes that
you're working with
and they're all going to participate in
different ways along this continuum of
not interested to maybe situationally
interested or sustained
situational interest or like all the way
on the other end of the spectrum where
it's
complete intrinsic or individual
interest so with kids being along that
continuum we need to kind of think about
different ways of participating and
different types of attitudes or levels
of interest in the classes that we work
with and how to work with all of them
and ideally try and promote further
interest in the subject area
okay so a quick recap of the intro of
this paper
so the authors are saying hey we need to
if we're going to have all these like
cs initiatives and implementations and
whatnot we need to take a look into how
are kids engaging with this
in terms of their attitudes and interest
in the classes that they are now
being forced or electing to take so now
let's quickly
get nerdy and look at the methods
section so they designed a survey that
was sent out to
these students were in a variety of
programs such as bootstrap scripted
and the nyc software engineering program
as well as a couple software engineering
classes in high schools
so the survey was sent out was kind of
broken down into a few different
categories
or variables so one main
area was the perceived pedagogical
effectiveness
the next section was the perceived rigor
and expectations
and was student engagement and then it
was student interest
so each one of these main categories
kind of has their own subcategories so
for example in the student engagement
section the three subcategories were
participation
in class participation outside class
and excited to be ncs so if you want to
take a look at the different variables
that they were assessing take a look at
page 245 there's a
table at the top all right so let's talk
results here
so as was mentioned in the abstract
there were basically five subgroups that
they labeled as one
enthusiasts two bookish
three engaged four idlers
and five disinterested so think of that
kind of like as a continuum
of levels of engagement from enthusiasts
like super excited to
disinterested like why am i even here i
don't want to take this class
okay so if we look at this continuum on
the positive side of things in terms of
amount of interest we have the
enthusiasts and the bookish
students and what's fascinating is
the cs students who were labeled as
enthusiasts made up 54.6
of the sampled students so that means
more than half of the students who
responded to the survey were identified
as
being on the positive end of the
spectrum and were enthusiastic about
the cs classes that they were doing and
the reason why they were labeled that
way is because
quote these students have the highest
proportion positive responses
to questions about their experience
learning cs as well as the highest
interest
and engagement level inside and outside
of the classroom
end quote that's from page 246. now if
we go to the other end of the spectrum
we have the disinterested students and
what was kind of nice to see is that
number was very low that percentage so
it was only 6.3
of students were marked as disinterested
so i want to read you a few sentences of
findings on disinterested students from
page 246 because i think this is
really interesting for cs educators to
hear quote
a low proportion of students in this
group indicated that their teacher did
motivating activities in the classroom
interesting
the lowest proportion of students who
participated in cs focus
activities inside thirty two point one
percent
and outside four point nine percent in
the classroom
in addition only ten point four percent
of disinterested
cs students believed that they consider
themselves as cs people
end quote okay so let's talk about the
other three
different subcategories in here so
bookish students
again this is on the high end of the
spectrum was 22.2 percent of the
students who were surveyed
and 94.7 percent of them expressed a
high interest in taking cs
in their cs class
and 92.1 percent of them thought that cs
could be useful for their future
and that 97.1 percent of them also saw
themselves as
cs people however only 45.9
felt that cs could be useful in everyday
life and only
actually engaged in cs activities
outside of the classroom itself
so although the majority of booker's
students
were very engaged in class and very much
so enjoyed and thought that there was
a future for them with cs they still did
not engage in it
outside of the classroom setting now the
other two areas
the engaged and the idlers engaged
mostly felt that the classes were
interesting and motivating whereas the
idlers less so
for example the idlers had only 18
of respondents indicate that they
actually felt cs was useful in everyday
life
and only 21.1 percent actually express
any interest in cs content
so on page 247 there's a chart at the
top of the page that shows the five
different subgroups of cs students
so using that chart you can see how each
subgroup responded
on average to the different categories
of questions that were asked
now i want to close the discussion of
these findings with a quote from page
quote the characteristics of these
groups highlight the need for more
granularity in our measurements and
descriptions of interest
as we measure cs education's impact on
students end quote
so this gets at one of my lingering
questions and one of the problems that i
have with surveys
in in particular so surveys are great
for sending out something to a lot of
people
getting some general feedback and
getting some
responses like these maybe even some
open prompts
or responses that can be put into codes
or themes or categories like they did in
this latent class analysis
my follow-up question that would be for
each person who responded
to this survey is why
why did they market this way why did
they mark that they were
interested in the content but did not
see an application
outside of the class so for example why
is it that some of the subgroups were
very interested in the classroom setting
but they did not engage in computer
science out of the classroom this is
like the big million dollar question
that i think we honestly need to be
asking of every kid that we work with
if students are in your class and
they're very engaged with it but they
don't go home and work on it
why is that is it because they don't
have access to devices or to the
internet
is it because they don't have time for
it is because they're interested in it
but they don't realize they can do it at
home
like some of the kids that i've worked
with could it be that all they're really
interested in
is getting a good grade and checking off
whatever is on the rubric to get that
good grade and outside of that they're
just playing the game that is called
school
and they really don't have any interest
in the subject area that they're doing
well in
or perhaps it's some of the equity
things that we've talked about in the
other unpacking scholarship episodes or
even some of the interviews
maybe they don't see themselves in cs
because they don't see other people like
them or they don't know that they have a
potential career in this
with or without degrees or education
they could go into this but they just
don't know that
or maybe they're interested in a career
in something else and they don't realize
that they can do cs for fun
one of the big things that i've talked
about in particular in a lot of the
interviews
is yeah it's great that a lot of people
want jobs and there's plenty of cs jobs
out there
but what about the people who just want
to engage and see us for fun
like all the unpacking scholarship
episodes that i did on mod culture
like i proposed my wife by modding the
game minecraft why did i do that it had
nothing to do with a job
i learned java so i could get married
perhaps there are students that are like
that they're like you know what i really
want to become a doctor
i'm inspired by the medical
professionals right now that are
combating kovid and that's what i want
to do and then you could go
cool did you know that you could analyze
data
using computer science techniques that
you're learning now maybe that's they're
in
to realize that there are connections
outside of this but we won't know until
we actually ask those follow-up
questions of why
so if there's one thing that i can leave
you with it's just when you are back in
the classroom
with your kids ask them why why are they
interested and
or why are they not interested don't
just ask one end of the continuum
seriously ask everybody you could even
start off your each quarter or something
with that question
why are you or are you not interested in
computer science
if you're not interested in it what are
you passionate about and why
i hope you found this episode useful
next week is going to be another
interview
and two weeks from now will be another
unpacking scholarship
as always i just ask that you simply
share this with somebody who might find
this interesting and useful
i hope you're all staying safe i hope
you're all having a wonderful week and i
will talk to you
next week
Article
Graves, K. E., & DeLyser, L. A. (2017). Interested In Class, But Not In The Hallway: A Latent Class Analysis (LCA) of 2015-16 CS4All Student Surveys. Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education - SIGCSE ’17, 243–248.
Abstract
“Computer science (CS) education initiatives often use measures of interest to assess outcomes. Although appropriate for initiatives meant to encourage future participation, these measures do not always align with the complex nature of interest as described by the learning sciences literature or recognize the reality that school-related initiatives aimed at student engagement in CS will not produce individual interest in every student. In this paper, we present a review of the interest literature, and data from a survey with evidence of validity of over 1,500 students in various CS courses in New York City. By using Latent Class Analysis (LCA), we identify five different statistically significant subgroups of CS students: Enthusiasts, Engaged, Bookish, Idlers, and Disinterested. Our findings suggest that while some students enjoy CS in class and feel the teacher is pedagogically effective, they may not develop the individual interest characterized by seeking additional learning opportunities outside of class.”
Author Keywords
Interest, CSforAll, K-12 CS Education, Assessment
My One Sentence Summary
This paper highlights that although many of the 1,525 survey respondents expressed an interest in computer science in the classroom settings, they did not choose to engage in CS outside of the classroom.
Some Of My Lingering Questions/Thoughts
Why are some students interested in content in the classroom are not interested in continuing their learning outside of the classroom?
What questions could we ask to figure out their reasons for those answers?
Resources/Links Relevant to This Episode
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