Education Commons^™

Enhancing Classroom Instruction With Online News, Michael D. Ekstrand, Katherine Landau Wright, Maria Soledad Pera

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Purpose

Investigate how school teachers look for informational texts for their classrooms. Access to current, varied, and authentic informational texts improves learning outcomes for K-12 students, but many teachers lack resources to expand and update readings. The Web offers freely-available resources, but finding suitable ones is time-consuming. This research lays the groundwork for building tools to ease that burden.

Methodology

This paper reports qualitative findings from a study in two stages: (1) a set of semi-structured interviews, based on the Critical Incident Technique, eliciting teachers’ information-seeking practices and challenges; and (2) observations of teachers using a prototype teaching-oriented news search …

Computer Science For Equity: Teacher Education, Agency, And Statewide Reform, Joanna Goode, Max Skorodinsky, Jill Hubbard, James Hook

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper reports on a statewide “Computer Science for All” initiative in Oregon that aims to democratize high school computer science and broaden participation in an academic subject that is one of the most segregated disciplines nationwide, in terms of both race and gender. With no statewide policies to support computing instruction, Oregon's legacy of computer science education has been marked by both low participation and by rates of underrepresented students falling well-below the already dismal national rates. The study outlined in this paper focuses on how teacher education can support educators in developing knowledge and agency, and impacting policies …