The Computer Science Teacher Landscape: Results of a Nationwide Teacher Survey
In this episode I unpack Koshy, Martin, Hinton, Scott, Twarek, and Davis’ (2021) publication titled “The Computer Science Teacher Landscape: Results of a Nationwide Teacher Survey,” which provides recommendations for the field based on a summary of findings on teacher demographics, current challenges for CS educators, and the state of cultural relevance in CS education.
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Welcome back to another episode of the CSK8 podcast.
My name is Jared O'Leary.
Each week has been alternating between an interview with a guest
or multiple guests and an unpacking scholarship episode
where I talk about some of the latest research
or some seminal papers in relation to education.
This week's particular episode is an unpacking scholarship
episode, and it is unpacking the report titled The Computer
Science Teacher Landscape on Results of a Nationwide Teacher Survey.
This paper came out in May of 2021.
It is very relevant at the time of this recording and release,
and the authors for this particular paper are Sonia Kashi, Alexis Martin,
Laura Hinton, Alison Scott, Brian Work and Felicia Davis.
Apologies if I mispronounce any names.
This paper was a joint collaboration between CSK and the K Port Center.
All right, so here's the background from the summary of this particular paper.
Quote, The technology sector remains one of the fastest growing industries
across the nation and continues to rapidly permeate all facets of society.
The next generation of the computing
workforce must be equipped with the skills to examine how current systems
exacerbate inequities and to develop new, more equitable innovations.
To enable this shift, computer science T.
S instruction needs to develop not only students as computing identities
and computational thinking, but also critical thinking and ethical reasoning.
Teachers are key to this transformation, yet little is known about the landscape
of pre K-12 teachers and how equipped they are to provide equitable instruction.
In order to examine the backgrounds of science teachers and the support
and resources needed to implement culturally relevant competing pedagogical
practices, McCabe Center and the Computer Science Teachers Association
surveyed nearly 3700 K-12
teachers across the nation in the summer of 2020.
And, quote, so far, to summarize this report into a single sentence,
I'd say that this report provides recommendations for the field
based on a summary of findings on teacher demographics.
Current challenges for US educators in the state.
There's cultural relevance in CSE education.
Now, as with the Unpacking scholarship episode that I did two weeks ago,
I basically could highlight this whole thing.
So I highly recommend actually going and taking a look at this particular report.
It is available for free and include a direct link to it in the show notes
which you can find at Gerard O'Leary dot com or by simply clicking
the link in the app that you're listening to this on.
So the first few pages of this particular report provides an executive summary,
so you can read some of the main key findings in there.
I'm going to skip over that and actually just dive into the findings itself.
It's a good place to start.
If you want a very quick overview outside of this particular podcast.
All right.
So this particular report is centered around four questions and they are
number one,
what are the demographic backgrounds, a pre K-12 teachers
and what credentials and experience do they bring to see US classrooms?
Number two, what challenges do pre-K 12
see US teachers face in building equitable classrooms?
Number three, to what extent are effective culturally relevant?
See US teaching practices culturally implemented in K-12 classrooms?
And what are the challenges faced by teachers?
And number four, what are the recommendations to support
pre K-12 teachers in building equitable and inclusive classrooms?
That's from page five.
All right.
So the report is centered around each one of these.
So the first question, what are the demographic backgrounds of science
teachers to the 77% of the teachers who responded in public schools?
But of the respondents, only 27% served pre-K through five.
served grades nine through 12.
So in other words, there are significantly less
teachers of computer science in the elementary level
than there are in middle school and in high school,
which honestly makes sense because most of computer science classes
and offerings were in the high school level until fairly recently.
In the last decade or so, it started to trickle down
into middle school and is now more prominent in elementary school.
Thanks to organizations like code.org or even an organization that I work with.
Put up Professional Development, which focuses on elementary education and PD.
Now, looking at the data, it's interesting that the demographics
for the teachers overall, 75% of teachers were white.
Latin
or Pacific Islander, and then 6% were categorized as other.
Now, what's interesting for the 75% of teachers, of course,
being white, the reason why that's interesting is because in CPS
released a report and so the stats in 2017, 2018
that across all the teachers, 79% were white.
And then in 1999 and year
So it appears that it's slowly shifting over the course
of a couple of decades from 84% in 2000 to 79% in 2018.
Now, in this particular paper, we're it's saying 75%.
What's also interesting is the way that they broke it down
by grades is you can see that in elementary school, 68% were white
and middle school, 74% were white.
And in high school, 79% were white.
So the higher the grade level, the more likely
your teacher is going to be white.
Also, if you are in a high income school,
you are 82% likely to have a white teacher of computer science.
However, if you're in a low income school, you're only 56% likely
likely to have a teacher who is white who is teaching computer science.
Here's a quote from page seven
quote Black, Indigenous Latinxs
and Pacific Islander teachers were represented at higher rates,
at lower income, more racially diverse and urban schools.
Yet computer science teachers of color are still underrepresented relative
to their proportion of the teaching workforce, unquote.
Now, shifting over to their findings on gender.
were women, which they say is, quote,
in alignment with the general pre K-12 teacher population.
Now, I agree that it is in alignment with the majority of teachers being women.
I disagree that it's actually less than the data
that I was looking at for NCIS, which I include a link to in the show notes.
The for example, in the years 2017 and 18,
but only 64% of teachers of computer science are female.
That is higher percentage of male population
who are seen as educators than there are in the teaching field.
Now, unfortunately, they don't include
gender demographic information outside of the binary.
So all it has is male and female, But maybe in future surveys
they can actually include some nonbinary individuals like myself.
So those are the demographics of the teachers.
Now, it's actually take a look at some of the courses that they taught.
So what's interesting is that only 30% of the respondents had more than 75%
of their teaching load dedicated specifically to computer science.
In other words,
most of the people who were teaching computer science,
that was not their only class that they were teaching.
My guess, for example, in high school, like it was in my high school,
is it might be like a math educator who's teaching
primarily math classes and maybe has one or two courses
in computer science, something along those lines.
So here's a breakdown from one of their charts on page eight,
which is describing the different courses that were taught.
So 35% of teachers were teaching an intro high school science course.
eight CSS course as a standalone course.
principles,
or an integrated K-8.
CSS course was retired,
computer Science A, and then 16% were teaching other.
Now, note that teachers were able to select
multiple types so that those percentages obviously don't add up to 100%.
For example, you might be teaching high school CSS course
and an AP course or two and then not the others.
You can check all three of those. All right.
So the next main section talking about teachers is what credentials
and experiences do teachers bring to see as classrooms.
The, for example, they looked at the educational background.
Here's a quote from page nine quote,
Nearly 30% of teachers graduated with a computer and technical sciences
degree and 6% graduated with a minor in computer science.
Notably, high school teachers were more likely than those in elementary
and middle schools to have had exposure to post secondary computer
science coursework, with 81% having taken at least one computer science
course and 38% having majored in the computer and technical sciences.
Similarly, teachers who taught at higher income schools, urban schools and schools
with a low proportion of black Indigenous, Latin and Pacific Islander students
were more likely to have post-secondary computer science exposure in comparison
to their counterparts teaching in lower income schools, rural areas
and more racially diverse schools.
So that finding is interesting.
What it might show is that people with more experience
are working in the higher income schools
and the less racially diverse schools and in urban areas,
which might lead to the question of why is that?
But that's something that will need to be unpacked in a lot of research
that's outside of the scope of this particular survey.
So the next subsection on this talks about credentialing.
And so it basically shows that, quote,
teachers in lower income schools, rural areas and schools
with majority black, Indigenous Latinxs and Pacific Islander students
were less likely to hold credentials in the computer and technical sciences.
In other words, people who are more likely to have CSC related
credentials were likely to teach in higher income
schools in urban areas and schools with less racial diversity.
So thinking back to previous episodes where I unpack some scholarship
related to egomaniac influences, so the structure of structures
and how those things inform inequities within society,
like think of the corollary Pedagogy of the Oppressed Book
chapters that I unpacked or think of some of the interviews,
like with Joyce McCall, Joanna Goode, Nikki Washington, etc..
In those particular episodes, we talk about how there are systems
that are in place that are inequitable and really have an impact on
who can have apartment opportunities or access to computer science,
which we'll actually talk a little bit more about when it comes to access
to devices and Internet at home in an upcoming section.
But again, tying it back to this particular thing.
So what it's basically saying is that kids who are in urban,
richer, whiter communities are more likely
to have higher access to see educators with more experience
than their peers in rural, poorer or more racially diverse
communities.
In addition, in the classroom experience section that is unpacked in the next page
on page 11, basically showing that if you're in a low income school
or a more racially diverse school or a rural school,
it's likely that your CSC educator that is working there or educators
have less experience than in higher income, lower,
racially diverse and urban schools.
Now, an important finding that's also on page 11 that they talk about is, quote,
Less than two thirds of teachers, 61%, reported participating
in a professional learning community and less than one third of teachers,
only 8% reported participating in ongoing coaching, unquote.
So professional development and community building is something that
we can continue to work on.
So the nonprofit that I work for Boot Up, we provide professional development
nationwide
to educators who want to engage
in interest driven learning through computer science at the elementary level.
We also provide
free curriculum that use the free platforms, scratch and scratch Junior.
This makes it so that anybody can use this kind of content.
However, not everybody has access to be able to pay
to receive professional development.
So this is an area that is needed for educators,
especially for the educators who don't have experience
with computer science or don't have a background in it.
So the next section of this paper is addressing the question What challenges
do pre-K 12 six teachers face in building equitable classroom?
Now, if you look at figure 11, that's on page 12,
it is discussing the major challenges to cease education.
So I'm just going to kind of highlight each one of these.
So 30% of respondents indicated that big challenge was lack of school.
Bayan 24% indicated a challenge.
It was a lack of students subject knowledge.
subject knowledge.
or software resources,
or enrollment,
and 20% indicated a lack of curricular resources.
Okay, so that's the highlight.
But they're going to unpack each one of these in the following pages,
and I'll just kind of highlight some of the key findings within that.
But again, I highly recommend actually checking out this report.
Again, it is for free and it's found in the show notes.
So an interesting quote on page 12, under the access to resources
section is, quote, almost two times more teachers in lower income.
In comparison, higher
income and elementary schools in comparison in middle or high schools
were likely to be affected by insufficient hardware or software, unquote.
Quote A little bit further down, here's another quote from the same page.
Quote, 30% of teachers serving more racially
diverse schools describe their students facing barriers brought on
by the lack of technology in their homes as shared by one teacher.
None of my students have access to Internet or personal computing devices.
At home.
School is the only place they interact with computers in any capacity.
Again, thinking of the huge Monica influences.
So people who have higher income are twice as likely to have access
to devices and internet at home than households with a lower income.
And then when we look at the comparison between elementary and high school
or middle schools, it's basically showing
that if you're in a high school and middle school,
you're nearly twice as likely to have access
to appropriate hardware and software compared to elementary schools.
Now, that's obviously a problem.
If you want kids to learn computer science and learn how to code, yes,
you can do unplugged.
Yes, There's some really cool stuff that you can do with physical computing
without a screen, but it limits your options.
In the next subsection on teachers, knowledge is, of course, content.
They basically argue that there's not enough professional development,
especially professional development that is low cost as teachers typically
have to pay for that kind of stuff and do it outside of their school time.
Unless you get some kind of district wide implementation
and commitment from admin to help support this,
which is the approach that we use at Buda and I highly recommend it.
Now one of the stats that I previously cited off,
they unpack a little bit more on page 14 and this is an interesting one.
So quote, 24% of teachers reported that students lack of exposure to computer
science content was a major challenge to classroom instruction.
Middle school and high school teachers were more likely to identify students
lack of content knowledge
as a major challenge in comparison to elementary school teacher, end quote.
I mean, that makes sense.
Like, I don't expect a kindergartner to come in
with extensive knowledge on something, and I expect you to design and facilitate
learning experiences that help them understand the content knowledge.
Certainly, they can
come in with a lot of content knowledge, but it's not an expectation on my behalf.
There's no prerequisites.
In other words,
whereas typically in high school there are sometimes prerequisites
for some classes.
But in this case
I still kind of look at this and go, But isn't that the point of like teaching?
Why are we expecting a certain amount of content knowledge in a subject area
that is in the grand scheme of things, relatively new,
But maybe I'm not thinking of a specific scenario
where it makes sense that students would have a lot of content knowledge.
Again, the fact that this is considered to be a big challenge for 24% of teachers
is kind of raises some questions for me.
So the next section on page
students are, how interested they are to learn computer science.
Now, what's interesting,
if we look at like geography from urban to rural, it's like a 1% difference.
If we look at race and ethnicity is something
about a 3% difference in income, it's about a 5% difference
compared to schools with low income and high income.
However, when we look at the grade levels between elementary, middle and high
school, there's interesting spread that makes sense to me.
So teachers reporting a lack of student sees interest in elementary school.
Only 11% reported that in middle school at 19% reported that.
And in high school, 27% reported that.
Now, one reason why that might make sense, in my opinion,
is that in elementary school, it's usually required.
You don't really get to have many electives in class, maybe banned
choir or extra as a pull out elective, but that might be it.
Otherwise, you're forced to go to art class,
You're forced to go to class, you're forced to go to music class.
You're forced to go to a computer science class.
That's typically how it works in most elementary schools.
And I'm aware of it's not until middle school and high school
when you're really able to start electing to take electives.
So maybe it's just that
students are interested in other areas more than computer science,
and because of scheduling, they choose those subject areas overseas.
But I don't know.
Now another interesting finding on the following page is on page 16.
So it says, quote, Only 61% of teachers across school profiles believe
topics on inequity should be covered in their computer science class.
A greater number of teachers were reticent to discuss topics of inequity
in elementary schools, higher income schools, rural areas and schools.
With a small proportion
of black, indigenous Latin and Pacific Islander students, end quote.
Why is that?
Now, interestingly, the responses
include some deficit language in terms of assumptions around
students and families being incapable of doing things or not supporting things.
And the quotes at the bottom of page
from some of the responses.
So I do recommend looking at that and then reflecting on it
as we as a field really kind of need to talk about these things.
Like, for instance, as I've talked about before,
there's a lot of documentaries and articles, publications
around the bias that is found in face recognition technology.
So there's a lot of false positives for people with darker
complexion than there are for people the lighter complexion.
That's something that we can and should talk about in relation to user
design and computer interaction, etc., and just general ethics and computing.
So the fact that 39% of people didn't think we needed to talk about inequities
in computer science,
I respectfully disagree, but I don't know exactly why they're saying that.
Maybe they're unaware of some of these designs
that are essentially racist, intentionally or unintentionally.
So one thing that I think we could all do is just not assume
people are on the same wavelength with us when it comes to discussing inequities
in computer science classes and making it a focal point.
All right.
So the third section starts on page 17, and so it addresses the question
to what extent are effective, culturally relevant teaching practices
currently reflected in pre K-12 schools, classrooms,
and what are the challenges faced by teachers?
So the first main section is talking about perceptions of existence curricula.
So 65% of teachers believe that they had some curricular
resources that met the diverse needs of their students.
But 55% of teachers found themselves actually having to revise content
to make it more engaging and or relevant to the kids that they were working with.
The, for example, making it more aligned to students interests
or changing it up so that you had different levels
of difficulty to like pick one of these three variations on the same idea.
One is an intro version, one is an intermediate version,
and one is a more advanced version that all dives into the same content.
So if you are a curriculum provider, one thing that you could do is rate
those kinds of differentiation in your materials or make it so
that your materials are more open source or easy to be modified to.
For example, with the curriculum that I create, I put up
we have them available on Google Docs so you can save your own copy
and then remove stuff that you don't need or modify things to.
Like, for example, align with your state
standards as opposed to CDS, national standards, etc..
Now on the next page,
there's a really interesting paragraph that I'm going to read.
So this is page 18,
and it has to do with confidence in culturally relevant pedagogical practices.
So here's a quote quote Despite making up the majority
of the computer science teacher workforce, only 59% of white teachers
compared to 67% of black, Indigenous, Latinx and Pacific Islander teachers,
we're confident utilizing materials, highlighting race, ethnicity
and culture in qualitative responses, One teacher shared.
As a white person, I struggle with connecting to diverse cultures.
I allow for personalization and encourage kids with the UPU mentality,
but I still struggle with knowing how they may learn or connect differently.
Another shared
I don't know what underrepresented kids might see as more relevant.
I also struggle with getting them to be motivated about computer science,
so I'd add some things that might motivate them more.
I just don't know what that is yet.
As summarized by another teacher,
there is a lack of teachers
who are prepared to teach students of colors
both academically and non academically teachers.
Is lack of confidence in this area negatively impact utilizing
material, highlighting diversity,
which is a disservice to students as academic progress.
Not only will students have a narrower perception of who belongs
in the field of computing, it will also inhibit their ability
to critically analyze bias in technology, unquote.
So that's a really important quote to really sit
with as a field and really think through.
Okay, So page 19 and on are basically the recommendations
that teachers can do based on the findings.
So I'm going to briefly summarize them,
but again, I highly recommend you actually read their support.
It's relatively short, only 23 pages with lots of graphs and whatnot,
but hopefully this gives you enough of a teaser
to actually want to go out and check it out.
So the first recommendation that they give is to develop incentive structures
to recruit, retain and diversify the pool of CSS teachers,
which totally makes sense.
And then we want to have CSS educators
who actually represent the diversity that we see in the communities
impacted by computer science, which would be everybody.
So we don't want to just have more white and Asian males in computer science.
But honestly, these percentages were better than I thought they would be.
I thought there would be a higher percentage of white individuals
and a higher percentage of males within computer science education.
So even though I was pleasantly surprised with that, there's obviously
still some improvement and needs to be done in those areas
and in other demographic areas besides just race, gender, why not?
All right.
So the second recommendation that they provide
is to build comprehensive teacher training, certification and endorsement
programs aligned to an equity focused computing education framework.
So this is kind of a twofer.
So it's basically saying we recommend that you provide professional development
and certification processes to help these teachers
who don't feel confident yet in computer science, which I totally agree with,
but they also recommend combining that with a focus on
equity centered computing education,
which will hopefully address the issue of 39% of people thinking they don't need
to talk about inequalities in computer science education because we do.
The third recommendation that they provide is to expand access to ongoing teacher
professional development.
So while point two is basically saying, Hey, for pre-service educators
and even some educators that are currently in service,
like higher education, we need to provide some support,
but also we need to provide some ongoing professional development that helps out.
You can't do these one and done Cool.
I took a bootcamp and now I know everything
about computer science education and I never need to learn anything else.
Instead, you got to just continue
in some kind of a sustainable fashion over the course of many years.
So for example, when we are doing professional development, I boot up,
we usually do a 2 to 3 year implementation with a district
where we do a graduate release over to an instructional coach
who will continue providing professional development
to the teachers after our two or three year commitment is up,
the goal is to make us so that districts are sustainable
so they can continue to train new teachers and continue
to dive deeper into these indefinite right.
So recommendation number four is to prioritize CSS as a core
course across a pre K-12 pipeline.
So what they're basically arguing is that rather than making it
this optional thing, if it's part of the core,
then it's more likely to happen within the school day, which I agree with.
That is more likely to happen.
But I disagree with four subjects
and required courses in general, but I've talked about that
in other podcast episodes, so I won't ramble on here.
Instead, I will provide you the final recommendation that they give,
which is to build a district wide coalition to champion an equitable cease
implementation plan.
In other words, finding some way to implement
in a sustainable and equitable way.
And as I mentioned, the approach that we use at Buda
really focuses on this trying to make things sustainable
and make it district wide rather than just like only the gifted or on students
or only after school class or only one magnet school within a district.
And what we want is all schools in all grade levels
at the elementary level to be engaging in computer science.
And we found that to be extremely effective,
especially because if you only have like one teacher or one class
that's doing this, what if that teacher leaves the district?
There goes your entire science program.
You don't want that.
Well, maybe you do. I can't speak for you.
All right.
So that basically concludes the main summary of some of the findings
in this paper.
Again, there's a lot more that I left out because I could have highlighted
pretty much all of that and just read it verbatim.
But I'd prefer to just point you towards the actual report so you can check it out.
I do like to end these unpacking scholarship episodes,
talking about lingering questions that I have in
in these questions, I'm actually just going to pose it,
but I'm not going to talk about it
because it's questions more for you to think about.
So the first question that I have is
how does this report inform your own practices in CSE education?
Then the second question that I have is
what questions could they ask in the next iteration of this kind of survey
and ask that because there's always room for improvement in survey research.
So, for example, I mentioned they don't include nonbinary individuals
in their data of report
or summary,
and I think they should, though I think they should ask questions about that.
And if you do have questions that you've got
that you'd like to share with them, reach out to the Kapor Center.
I'm sure they're very willing
to listen to some ideas and some questions that you might have now include
a link to their website in the show notes, which you can find at Geritol or Econ.
But that being said, I hope you enjoyed listening to this summary of the report.
I hope you consider reading it.
Stay tuned next week for another interview and stay tuned
following me or another unpacking scholarship episode.
Hope you're all staying safe and are having a wonderful week.
Article
Koshy, S., Martin, A., Hinton, L., Scott, A., Twarek, B., & Davis, K. (2021). The computer science teacher landscape: Results of a nationwide teacher survey.
Background
“The technology sector remains one of the fastest growing industries across the nation and continues to rapidly permeate all facets of society. The next generation of the computing workforce must be equipped with the skills to examine how current systems exacerbate inequities and to develop new, more equitable innovations. To enable this shift, computer science (CS) instruction needs to develop not only students’ computing identities and computational thinking, but also critical thinking and ethical reasoning. Teachers are key to this transformation, yet little is known about the landscape of PreK-12 CS teachers and how equipped they are to provide equitable CS instruction. In order to examine the backgrounds of CS teachers and the support and resources needed to implement culturally-relevant computing pedagogical practices, the Kapor Center and the Computer Science Teachers Association surveyed nearly 3,700 PreK-12 CS teachers across the nation in summer 2020.”
My One Sentence Summary
This report provides recommendations for the field based on a summary of findings on teacher demographics, current challenges for CS educators, and the state of cultural relevance in CS education.
Some Of My Lingering Questions/Thoughts
How does this report inform your own practices in CS education?
What questions could they ask in the next iteration of this kind of survey?
Resources/Links Relevant to This Episode
Other podcasts that were mentioned or are relevant to this episode
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In this episode I unpack Kallia and Cutts’ (2021) publication titled “Re-examining inequalities in computer science participation from a Bourdieusian sociological perspective,” which uses Bourdieu’s discussions of capital, habitus, and field to analyze 147 publications on CS interventions.
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In this interview with Nicki Washington, we discuss the importance of cultural competency, expanding beyond “diversity” by focusing on creating inclusive and equitable environments, learning from people and scholarship outside of the field, lessons learned working with CS educators across the country, lessons learned while teaching during a pandemic, focusing on the humanity in computer science education, and much more.
The Shire as Metaphor for Systemic Racism with Joyce McCall
In this interview with Joyce McCall, we unpack and problematize some of the issues around race and racism in relation to education. In particular, we discuss the importance of allies not only showing up to support marginalized or oppressed groups, but staying when conversations get uncomfortable; the Shire from the Lord of the Rings as a metaphor for hegemony and systemic racism; as well as a variety of theories such as critical race theory, double consciousness, cultural capital; and much more.
Trans Voices Speak: Suggestions from Trans Educators about Working with Trans Students
In this episode I unpack Cayari et al.’s (2021) publication titled “Trans voices speak: Suggestions from trans educators about working with trans students,” which provides five suggestions from Trans educations on working with Trans students.
When Twice as Good Isn't Enough: The Case for Cultural Competence in Computing
In this episode I unpack Washington's (2020) paper titled "When twice as good isn't enough: The case for cultural competence in computing," which explores the five elements and six stages of cultural competence in relation to undergraduate computing programs.
More episodes related to culturally-relevant pedagogy/curricula
Listen to the episodes on Pedagogy of the Oppressed
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