Surfacing Computer Science in STEM Education Robert Schnabel (moderator) Indiana University Bloomington, IN
Susan Rodger
Mark Stehlik
Duke University Durham, NC
Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected] Chris Stephenson
John White
CSTA Executive Director Eugene, OR
ACM Chief Executive Officer New York, NY
[email protected]
[email protected] 2. Overall Objectives of the Session
Categories and Subject Descriptors
This special session reports on the recent activities of ACM’s Education Policy Committee (EPC) [3]. The EPC’s purpose is to develop policy positions and educate policy makers on behalf of the ACM, CSTA, and the broader computing community with the goal of improving the opportunities for quality education in computing and computer science. It will focus initially on steps to ensure that computer science education is identified as a critical component of K-12 education policy in the U.S. at both federal and state levels. Specifically the EPC will:
K.3.2 [Computer and Information Science Education]: Computer Science Education
General Terms Standardization, Legal Aspects
Keywords Computer Science Education, Education Policy, K-12 curriculum
1. Summary Discussion regarding proposals and polices to improve Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education in K-12 now span from local school boards up to the President of the United States [1]. It is no longer a question of whether STEM education will be a focus within K-12 education; it is how the United States and other nations are going to accomplish reform. Despite this attention, the computing education community still has important questions about whether STEM really includes all disciplines and whether the push toward “core” subjects [2] will leave sufficient room for rigorous and engaging computer science courses. This special session will present new research reflecting how computer science education is treated in each of the 50 states coupled with perspectives on the national education policy landscape and strategies for reform. It will connect the broad SIGCSE community to the policy issues by giving them new data and a call to action to help surface computer science within STEM in the discussions that are now happening around the country.
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Review issues that impact science, math, and computer science education in K-12 and higher education systems
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Determine if current policies are adequately serving the computing field and recommend improvements
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Comment on proposals before governmental bodies that impact computing issues
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Educate policymakers on the role and importance of computing education
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Provide expertise on key computing and education issues to policymakers
This session seeks to continue and extend a dialog started with the community at the 2008 SIGCSE conference [4]. Its primary goals are to educate SIGCSE attendees on the national landscape for education policy [5]; provide current information on where computer science fits; and present new, compelling research – collected on behalf of ACM’s EPC – on the substantial gaps in the ways in which states treat computer science education in grades K-12. This session is also designed to engage the audience in a broader discussion of the how ACM, and the community at large, can move forward with outreach and reform strategies to address these gaps.
3. Outline of the Session This special session will present three topics, each followed by a discussion. After each presentation, additional members of the EPC will discuss related issues facing the field as reform moves forward.
Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). SIGCSE’10, March 10–13, 2010, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. ACM 978-1-60558-885-8/10/03.
The first topic – presented by John White, ACM’s Chief
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Executive Officer – will cover the different components of ACM’s education activities and how they fit together.
discussion about how public policy decisions affect computer science learning in the classroom.
The second topic will explore education policy landscape and the Education Policy Committee’s plans for reform.
6. REFERENCES [1] President Barack Obama, April 27, 2009, Accessed 9/11/09 at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-bythe-President-at-the-National-Academy-of-Sciences-AnnualMeeting/
The third topic will cover two new pieces of research: 1) how the ACM K-12 Computer Science Model Curriculum Standards [6] have been (or have not been) integrated into grade 9-12 math, science, and technology standards across the United States; and 2) the extent to which computer science courses are or are not mapped into state graduation requirements The session will also cover issues such as teacher certification and perspectives on how to reform education from the local level.
[2] National Governors Assocation and Council of Chief State Schools effort – Common Core State Standards Initiative. Accessed 9/11/09 at: http://www.corestandards.org/
After the report from the committee there will be an extended dialog with the audience.
[3] The Education Policy Committee’s resources can be accessed at: http://www.acm.org/public-policy/educationpolicy-committee
4. Expectations
[4] “An Open Dialogue Concerning the State of Education Policy in Computer Science”, Schnabel, R., Buell, D., Goode, J., Moore, J., and Stephenson, C., Thirty-ninth SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (2008), 114-115.
This session is intended to engage the broad constituency of SIGCSE, that is, computer science educators from K-12 to higher education. As a result of the presentations and the broader discussion, the participants will have a deeper understanding of the current gaps in how computer science fits into the STEM education discussion and potential reforms that the ACM Education Policy Committee is moving forward. The discussion will also give members of the broader computer science education community an opportunity to provide critical feedback regarding these policy initiatives and to consider them in the broader context of providing consistent messages to policy makers with regard to the nature and importance of the discipline.
[5] Wilson, C. and Harsha, P., The Long Road to Computer Science Education Reform, Communications of the ACM. ACM 52,9 (Sept. 2009), 33–35. [6] ACM K-12 CS Model Curriculum, 2nd Edition http://www.csta.acm.org/Curriculum/sub/ACMK12CSModel .html [7] Stephenson C., Gal-Ezer, J., Haberman B., and Verno A., The New Education Imperative: Improving High School Computer Science Education, ACM/CSTA, 24-32.
5. Suitability for Special Session There is broad interest within the community about the state of computer science education in K-12 and the need to address the well-known issues [7,8]. A special session is sought because of the nature of the discussion, its reach across the community, and the need to engage the entire community in the important
[8] Goode, J., Reprogramming college preparatory computer science. Communications of the ACM 51,11 (Nov. 2008), 31–33.
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