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SIGCSE 2024, March 20–23, 2024, Portland, OR, USA, Improving equity in K-12 Computer Science (CS) education benefits from the collaboration of classroom teachers, school counselors, and school leaders. This paper presents the outcomes of a pilot program that brought together cross-functional teams consisting of CS teachers, school counselors, and administrators. Over the course of a year, these teams attended monthly, equity-focused workshops, leveraging pre-existing materials from affordable, high-quality, research-based programs. The use of these resources demonstrated benefits of sequencing and synthesizing existing programs. Evidence from surveys and interviews shows that the workshops promoted learning and fostered collaboration between the cross-functional teams that would not have happened otherwise. Participants were motivated by the program, and they generated ideas that turned into actionable projects to promote CS education equity in their schools. While the initiative was well received, areas for improvement were identified, particularly, in school recruitment, workshop structure, and evaluation. This pilot initiative demonstrates that equity-centered programs comprised of cross-functional teams can help achieve systemic improvement of CS education equity.

We present a curriculum and instruction framework for computer-supported teaching and learning about complex systems in high school science classrooms. This work responds to a need in K-12 science education research and practice for the articulation of design features for classroom instruction that can address the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) recently launched in the USA. We outline the features of the framework, including curricular relevance, cognitively rich pedagogies, computational tools for teaching and learning, and the development of content expertise, and provide examples of how the framework is translated into practice. We follow this up with evidence from a preliminary study conducted with 10 teachers and 361 students, aimed at understanding the extent to which students learned from the activities. Results demonstrated gains in students’ complex systems understanding and biology content knowledge. In interviews, students identified influences of various aspects of the curriculum and instruction framework on their learning.

In this paper we present a framework for building complex systems understanding in high school biology classrooms. The goal is to provide a modular heuristic that can inform the construction of curricular and instructional experiences including tools for teaching and learning and professional development workshops. Brief examples from current National Science Foundation-funded project activities and evaluation results from an exploratory study demonstrate the utility of the framework in practice.

While research on teaching and learning about complex systems has achieved solid grounding in the learning sciences, few educational studies have focused on articulating design features for classroom implementation that can serve a modular purpose for building curricular and instructional experiences. Furthermore, despite the fact that several studies describe important roles for teachers in constructing successful classroom learning experiences, only a few of them examine how teachers’ instructional practices, knowledge, and beliefs influence student learning outcomes and the extent to which teachers are interested and willing to teach through complex systems approaches. Furthermore, we do not know what supports teachers themselves say that they need to teach about complex systems in their classrooms. In this study, we present a curriculum and instruction framework that outlines how teaching and learning about complex systems in high school science classroom contexts can be done. We articulate the features of the framework and provide examples of how the framework is translated into practice. We follow with evidence from an exploratory study conducted with 10 teachers and over 300 students aimed at understanding change in teachers’ instructional practices; the extent to which students learned from the activities; what teachers’ perceptions were in terms of utility and usability; and what other supports teachers needed.

While research on teaching and learning about complex systems has achieved solid grounding in the learning sciences, few educational studies have focused on articulating design features for classroom implementation that can serve a modular purpose for building curricular and instructional experiences. Furthermore, despite the fact that several studies describe important roles for teachers in constructing successful classroom learning experiences, only a few of them examine how teachers’ instructional practices, knowledge, and beliefs influence student learning outcomes and the extent to which teachers are interested and willing to teach through complex systems approaches. Furthermore, we do not know what supports teachers themselves say that they need to teach about complex systems in their classrooms. In this study, we present a curriculum and instruction framework that outlines how teaching and learning about complex systems in high school science classroom contexts can be done. We articulate the features of the framework and provide examples of how the framework is translated into practice. We follow with evidence from an exploratory study conducted with 10 teachers and over 300 students aimed at understanding change in teachers’ instructional practices; the extent to which students learned from the activities; what teachers’ perceptions were in terms of utility and usability; and what other supports teachers needed.

This paper presents a curriculum intervention intentionally designed to align with Next Generation Science Standards in the high-school biology classroom. The project emphasizes learning about complex systems through an agent-based modeling tool called StarLogo Nova. Five curricular units have been developed on the topics of enzymes, ecology, protein synthesis, gene regulation, and sugar transport. In this exploratory study we were interested in understanding the extent to which students demonstrated understanding and skills in NGSS areas as they were designed. Evidence is gleaned from classroom observations and interviews with 50 students selected from the larger population of 352 students who worked with project resources during the 2013-2014 school year. Findings revealed that students demonstrated understanding and skills in all NGSS scientific practices and crosscutting themes particularly in the areas of developing and using models, analyzing and interpreting data, cause and effect, and systems and system models.

In this paper we present a framework for building complex systems understanding in high school biology classrooms. The goal is to provide a modular heuristic that can inform the construction of curricular and instructional experiences including tools for teaching and learning and professional development workshops. Brief examples from current National Science Foundation-funded project activities and evaluation results from an exploratory study demonstrate the utility of the framework in practice.