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Full-Text Articles in Education
Supporting And Sustaining Equitable Steam Activities In High School Classrooms: Understanding Computer Science Teachers’ Needs And Practices When Implementing An E-Textiles Curriculum To Forge Connections Across Communities, Deborah A. Fields, Yasmin B. Kafai
Supporting And Sustaining Equitable Steam Activities In High School Classrooms: Understanding Computer Science Teachers’ Needs And Practices When Implementing An E-Textiles Curriculum To Forge Connections Across Communities, Deborah A. Fields, Yasmin B. Kafai
Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications
While the last two decades have seen an increased interest in STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) in K-12 schools, few efforts have focused on the teachers and teaching practices necessary to support these interventions. Even fewer have considered the important work that teachers carry out not just inside classrooms but beyond the classroom walls to sustain such STEAM implementation efforts, from interacting with administrators to recruiting students and persuading parents about the importance of arts and computer science. In order to understand teachers’ needs and practices regarding STEAM implementation, in this paper, we focus on eight experienced computer …
Communicating About Computational Thinking: Understanding Affordances Of Portfolios For Assessing High School Students’ Computational Thinking And Participation Practices, Deborah A. Fields, Debora Lui, Yasmin Kafai, Gayithri Jayathirtha, Justice Walker, Mia Shaw
Communicating About Computational Thinking: Understanding Affordances Of Portfolios For Assessing High School Students’ Computational Thinking And Participation Practices, Deborah A. Fields, Debora Lui, Yasmin Kafai, Gayithri Jayathirtha, Justice Walker, Mia Shaw
Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications
Background and Context: While assessment of computational thinking concepts, practices, and perspectives is at the forefront of K-12 CS education, supporting student communication about computation has received relatively little attention.
Objective: To examine the usability of process-based portfolios for capturing students’ communication about their computational practices regarding the process of making electronic textile projects.
Method: We examined the portfolios of 248 high school students in 15 introductory CS classrooms from largely underserved communities, using a formal rubric (top-down) to code computational communication and an open-coding scheme (bottom-up) to identify computational practices described.
Findings: Students demonstrated stronger …
Steam Maker Education: Conceal/Reveal Of Personal, Artistic And Computational Dimensions In High School Student Projects, Lindsay Lindberg, Deborah A. Fields, Yasmin B. Kafai
Steam Maker Education: Conceal/Reveal Of Personal, Artistic And Computational Dimensions In High School Student Projects, Lindsay Lindberg, Deborah A. Fields, Yasmin B. Kafai
Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications
Much of maker education’s expansion has focused on STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) learning, leaving out equally promising opportunities for integrating arts learning. In this paper we share findings from a project in which high school students created electronic-textiles-based art representing features of a community important to them as a part of an elective high school computer science class. We addressed the following research questions: (1) What kinds of personal and community meanings did students convey through their maker projects? (2) How did students engage with artistic dimensions in their projects? (3) How did coding interactive features support students’ artwork? …
Putting Making Into High School Computer Science Classrooms: Promoting Equity In Teaching And Learning With Electronic Textiles In Exploring Computer Science, Deborah A. Fields, Yasmin B. Kafai, Tomoko Nakajima, Joanna Goode, Jane Margolis
Putting Making Into High School Computer Science Classrooms: Promoting Equity In Teaching And Learning With Electronic Textiles In Exploring Computer Science, Deborah A. Fields, Yasmin B. Kafai, Tomoko Nakajima, Joanna Goode, Jane Margolis
Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications
Recent discussions of making have focused on developing out-of-school makerspaces and activities to provide more equitable and enriching learning opportunities for youth. Yet school classrooms present a unique opportunity to help broaden access, diversify representation, and deepen participation in making. In turning to classrooms, we want to understand the crucial practices that teachers employ in broadening and deepening access to making. In this paper, we investigate two high school teachers’ approaches in implementing a novel eight-week, electronic textiles unit within the Exploring Computer Science curriculum, where students designed wearable electronic textile projects with microcontrollers, sensors, and LEDs. We share teachers’ …