2024
Early Childhood Teachers’ Use of Asset-based Computational Thinking Pedagogy
Assaf, L.C. & Justice, S. (2024, April 12). Early childhood teachers’ use of asset-based computational thinking pedagogy: Centering students’ expertise and life experiences. [Conference session]. American Educational Research Association, Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA, United States.
Assaf & Justice 2024 Asset-based CT (AERA)
Expressive STEM Storymaking: Art, Literacy, and Creative Computing
Justice & Assaf (forthcoming). In T. A. Lai and Y. Cooper (Eds), STEAM Education: Intersections and Thresholds, Brill-Sense.
This chapter features intersections of art, literacy, and creative computing. As a component of STEAM, creative computing augments story creation, or storymaking (Buganza et al., 2023; Compton & Thompson, 2018), prompting learners to explore expressive meaning making as collective interactions with texts. To signify a way of teaching that supports such learning activities, we propose expressive STEM as a design principle, illustrated here with examples from an elementary school and a preservice art education program in Texas, USA. Principles of expressive STEM storymaking drawn from these examples and from our teaching and research are offered in the chapter’s conclusion.
A Year of Learning: Early Childhood Teachers’ Computational Learning and
Implementation While Participating in a Yearlong Professional Learning Project
Assaf L.C. & Justice. S. (submitted; in revision)
The integration of computational thinking (CT) in education has become increasingly important nationally and internationally as we prepare students for the challenges of computing in the modern world (Denning & Tedre, 2019; Yadav & Berthelsen, 2021). CT refers to “solving problems, designing systems, and understanding human behavior by drawing on the concepts fundamental to computer science CS” (Wing, 2006, 2017). Researchers have argued that integrating CT in education is vital for students to become efficient and creative problem solvers in an increasingly computational world. However, while researchers have long argued for the centrality of CT to CS (Grover, 2021), there is a gap in the literature on how CT emerges and develops in early childhood and limited research on how CT is taught in early childhood classrooms (Luo et al., 2022). In fact, most K-12 educational research on CT focuses on middle and high schools, and even when elementary grades are explicitly targeted (e.g., Rich et al., 2021), the focus is rarely on the youngest students, with very little work specifically addressing teacher learning (Kotsopoulous et al., 2022; Strawhacker & Bers, 2018). In this study, to understand what early childhood teachers need to implement CT in their classrooms, we explored preK to 2nd grade teachers’ learning as they participated in a yearlong professional development program focused on CT.
2023
Make it Move!: Arts & Inquiry Approaches to Computational Thinking
Justice, S. & Assaf, L.C. (2023, October 19-21). Make it move!: Arts & inquiry approaches to computational thinking in teacher profession learning [Conference presentation]. Arts Education Research Institute 2023, Tucson, AZ, United States.
This paper describes a teacher professional learning program centered on computational thinking (CT). Arts and inquiry approaches framed CT as expressive meaning making. Participants included preK-to-2nd grade teachers (n=27) in public schools in Texas. This paper argues that arts and inquiry approaches can be effective for early elementary teacher professional learning even in STEM domains considered non-expressive.
Keywords: teacher education; computational thinking; art; literacy
We_Teach CS Summit
Justice, S. & Assaf, L.C. (2023, June 16). PreK to 2nd grade teachers noticing, naming, & connecting computational thinking to literacy learning [Conference presentation]. WeTeach_CS Summitt, University of Texas at Austin. Houston, TX.
This presentation describes early elementary lesson plans that integrate CS/CT with reading, writing, and storytelling. In this study we found that PreK to 2nd grade teachers gravitated to ELA content when exploring computational thinking with their students. This presentation shares cross-curricular learning activities designed by teachers to combine CS/CT with literacy. Our goal is to unpack learning activities that expand PreK-2nd grade ELA content with computational tools and materials, where students design, write, and perform stories with ScratchJR, Scratch, and various robotics platforms.
Everyday Choreographies as Pathways
Justice, S. & Assaf, L.C. (2023, June 13). Everyday choreographies as pathways for building computational literacies: Noticing, naming, and connecting CT precursors to curriculum [Graduate Seminar Guest Speaker Series]. City University of New York, College of Staten Island, Computing in Teacher Education. New York, NY, United States.
This presentation describes a 3-year study with early elementary teachers as they learned to integrate computational thinking (CT) within their established teaching practices. The study introduced teachers to CT with an inquiry-based, generative learning framework centered on tools and materials, aka “material inquiry”. After an initial CT learning institute, we observed teachers in their classrooms as they picked up and applied CT to their instruction. Among other takeaways, we have come to think of CT as a multimodal literacy rooted in everyday patterns of meaning making, or precursors.
Keywords: teacher education; computational thinking; precursors
K-5 Professional Learning Workshop
Justice, S. & Assaf, L.C. (2023, July 19). ScratchJr explorations: Noticing, naming, and connecting Tech App TEKS to Curriculum. [Workshop]. K-5 PD Extravaganza, WeTeach_CS, University of Texas at Austin. Round Rock, TX.
This workshop introduced K-5 teachers to ScratchJr as a multimodal literacy that connected with storytelling and supported the newly enacted Texas computing standards for elementary learning.
Discovery Research PreK-12 National Meeting
Justice, S. & Assaf, L.C. (2023, June 28-30). EPK-2: Exploring early childhood teachers’ abilities to identify computational thinking precursors to strengthen computer science in classrooms. [Poster presentation]. Discovery Research PreK-12, National Science Foundation PI Meeting. Washington DC. United States
2022
Computational Thinking and Literacy: Understanding Teachers’ Approaches to Leveraging CT and Literacy Across Early Childhood Classrooms
Assaf, L.C. & Justice, S. (2022, November 28). Computational thinking and literacy: Understanding teachers’ approaches to leveraging CT and literacy across early childhood classrooms [Conference presentation]. 72nd Annual Literacy Research Association Annual Conference, Phoenix, AZ, United States.
Multimodal Approaches to Literacy: Exploring Precursors to Computational Thinking with Primary Grade Teachers
Assaf, L.C. & Justice, S. (2022, July 5). Multimodal approaches to literacy exploring precursors to computational thinking with primary grade teachers [Conference presentation]. Dublin 2022: European Conference on Literacy,Dublin City University Institute of Education, Dublin, Republic of Ireland.