Award Info: 

NSF-DRL 1543061, STEM+C project, ~$1M, PI: Andrew Elby, Co-PIs: Aman Yadav, Ayush Gupta

Contact: For information regarding the project and associated activities contact Andrew Elby (elby@umd.edu)

Project Description:

The project researched the results of integrating scientific inquiry and computational thinking in elementary schools, focusing on grades 2-5. The need for strengthening computational thinking within STEM education is now recognized as an important priority, but computational thinking receives little attention in our nation's classrooms. Most resources like this to date have been seen as add-ons to the curriculum and have not been widely adopted. In collaboration with teachers, the project created exemplar lessons that embeds computational thinking in scientific inquiry rather than teaching it as an isolated topic. In intensive summer workshops and after school meetings during the academic year, teachers engaged in their own adult-level computational thinking and scientific inquiry, to help them develop their own sense of what scientific inquiry and computational thinking are. Starting with the exemplar lessons, the project worked with the teachers to iteratively modify, implement, and refine those lessons. The project research investigated how and to what extent this approach enhances teacher and subsequent student understanding (through the lessons they have developed) of computational thinking and inquiry. The project directly impacted 20 teachers in 3 schools, and over 1000 students.

The project researched the effectiveness of teaching computational thinking by embedding it in the process of science inquiry rather than teaching coding and computational thinking separately and then imposing that on science inquiry. Instead of directly teaching coding, the project introduced computational ways of thinking, such as algorithmic thinking, problem decomposition, flowcharts, debugging, loops, etc., that can be used in the inquiry process. The project researched if the prototype curriculum supported integrated computational thinking and inquiry, how the curriculum influenced student perceptions toward computing and science inquiry, and how teacher professional development activities improved their computational thinking and influenced their classroom practices. The research used a variety of research techniques, including think-aloud interviews, surveys, analysis of classroom video, classroom observations and field notes.

Publications:

Krist, C., Elby, A., Good, J., Gupta, A., Sohr, E. R., & Yadav, A.. "Integrating computational thinking strategies that support science inquiry: A case study from a summer PD.," American Educational Research Association 2017 Annual Meeting, 2017.

Sohr, E. R., Radoff, J., Gupta, A., & Elby, A.. "Entanglement of computational and fairness reasoning in a resource allocation scenario.," American Educational Research Association 2019 conference, 2019.

Sohr, E. R., Radoff, J., Gupta, A., & Elby, A.. "Entanglement of computational and fairness reasoning in a resource allocation scenario.," National Association of Research in Science Teaching (NARST) 2019 conference, 2019.

Radoff, J., Gupta, A., Sohr, E. R., & Elby, A.. "Teachers? shifting ideas about power and agency in a 5th grade science classroom.," American Educational Research Association 2019 conference, 2019.

Yadav, A., Krist, S., Good, J., & Caeli, E.. "Computational Thinking in Elementary Classroom: Measuring teachers Using Science Inquiry for Teachers to Think Computationally.," Computer Science Education, 2019.

Radoff, J., Gupta, A., Sohr, E. R., & Elby, A.. "Teachers? shifting ideas about power and agency in a 5th grade science classroom," American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) Summer Meeting, 2018.

Radoff, J., Gupta, A., Sohr, E. R., & Elby, A.. "Teachers? Shifting Interpretations of (In)equities in Classroom Participation," Physics Education Research Conference (PERC), 2018. 

Personnel:

Andrew Elby (UMD-TLPL)

Ayush Gupta (UMD-Physics)

Erin Sohr (UMD-Physics)

Jen Radoff (UMD-Physics)

Stina Krist (UIUC)

Aman Yadav (MSU)

Jon Good (MSU)