EPK-2 is designing and testing a replicable model of PreK to 2nd grade teacher professional development to address the need for more research in early childhood computer science education. We want to engage PreK to 2nd grade teachers in computational thinking (a problem-solving process) so that creative computing in art, science, and storytelling activities can be integrated in classrooms.
The EPK-2 professional development model will focus on long-term learning. We begin with a two-week creative computing institute for teachers and continue with a year-long series of classroom coaching sessions and teacher meetups.
EPK-2’s approach to teacher education is informed by Generative Professional Development (GPD), a framework emphasizing collaborative, participatory learning. In GPD, teachers gather culturally relevant and content-specific information about students’ abilities and needs to design lessons, implement those lessons, and to reflect on their own and their students’ learning.
Our guiding assumptions include the premise that learning occurs in communities of practice. We recognize that meaningful participation in such communities is always already in process, even in the earliest years. By this view, good teaching begins with noticing and naming what a child already knows and knows how to do, and continues with learning activities that strengthen the child’s participation in the community. In terms of computer science, and with computational thinking specifically, the goal is to help teachers connect early abilities, or precursors, to traditional content areas in order to nurture each child’s individual learning pathway.
EPK-2 contextualizes computational thinking as a participatory learning process that weaves curricular objectives together: art, science, storytelling. The goal is to help teachers, schools, and communities build computational thinking pathways from students’ earliest years through their later elementary, middle, and high school education. These pathways—sustainable, culturally relevant, and rooted in community participation—will advance the national goal of equitable computational fluency for all.