Course Syllabus

EDTEP 577 Justice and Equity in Computer Science Teaching

Course Description

This course teaches foundational intersections between computer science content knowledge and issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice. We discuss how these intersections play out in computer science classrooms, as well as society more broadly, developing critical consciousness of computer science and society.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the quarter, I hope you'll be able to:

• Demonstrate critical consciousness of how design and engineering decisions in computing affect individuals, communities, and society in unequal ways.
• Explain how algorithms and data can encode social, economic, and cultural values, especially in schools and in software used by youth.
• Explain moral, ethical, and policy issues in computing and the literacies required to understand them.
• Identify how inequitable distribution of computing resources affects opportunity, power, and equity in society.
• Examine how systemic barriers and social and psychological factors contribute to inequitable access, engagement, and achievement in CS among marginalized groups.
• Examine how perspective, privilege, and power impact student success and classroom culture and continuously work to counteract biases.
• Read and write computer programs at a level sufficient for 1) passing the NES K-12 CS exam and 2) teaching CS at a grade 6-9 level

Pedagogy

To help you learn the above, we'll primarily use four kinds of learning activities:

• Reading. You'll spend a lot of time reading in this class, both our required text and likely other resources online.
• CS Ask Me Anything (AMA). In these short 30 minute sessions at the beginning of class, you can ask me anything about computer science. No question is too silly, naive, controversial, basic, or advanced.  Curiosities are fine as well and you can ask my opinions about things. As part of your reading reflections, you'll pose one question and I'll discuss them. These sessions are intended to help you develop your CS content knowledge and also prepare for the K-12 NES CS content knowledge exam.
• Discussions and Debriefs. We will practice what Freire called "dialogic" methods, using discussion and dialogue to help develop our collective critical conscious of computing. Key to these discussions, however, are that you lead them, following your questions, interests, and concerns, but also doing so with awareness of your peers' as well. We'll generally have two of these each Monday. You will lead two of them throughout the quarter, coming to class prepared to facilitate discussion with the group. After each discussion, will briefly reflect together on what we liked and disliked about the discussion, what we learned, and what we wished we'd learned. Think of this as both practice for discussion-based pedagogy, but also a way to deepen your content knowledge about specific subjects in CS and overlapping fields.
• Programming. You will deeply engage in creating small programming projects of your own. There are several reasons why you're coding in this class:
  • To grow your CS content knowledge
  • To develop your programming self-efficacy
  • To give you a personal sense of how students might experience programming assignments that you give them
  • To give us concrete examples about programming upon which we can reflect critically on your design choices and process, and how they affect equity and justice aspects of what you are making.
• NES K-12 CS Exam Practice. Self study using this practice guide we've prepared.
  • Ask us questions about concepts you need help learning.
  • Raise these topics in studio for larger group discussion.

Readings

There is one major text we will use: Critically Conscious Computing: Methods for Secondary Education, a book that Amy wrote with several other CS educators and CS education researchers (including your other teachers in STEP CS!), specifically for this class. It cites many other works that you might be interested in reading.

Do your best to read the chapters before we discuss them in class. We'll spend the bulk of the time discussing the concepts in the chapter, so if you haven't read it, it will be hard to discuss them as a group.

Learning Technologies

We will use:

• Zoom. The most boring virtual platform for classrooms ever invented :)
• CS for All Washington Slack (#step-cs). Join with this invite link. We'll use this channel to coordinate around this class, your other STEP CS classes, and to connect with the broader community of CS educators and advocates.

Assessment

The course involves three types of (largely formative) assessments.

• Readings (21 chapters, satisfactory/unsatisfactory). Read a chapter, submit three sentences to Canvas: 1) what you found most fascinating (or if nothing was fascinating, what you found most boring, 2) what you found most confusing, and 3) at least one question you'd like me to address in the CS AMA. These are simple formative assessments that provide a small nudge to read and bootstrap our discussions.
• Discussion (1 discussion, satisfactory/unsatisfactory). You'll vote for and be assigned to one  discussion slot in which you'll need to come prepared to facilitate a discussion with the class on the topic you're assigned. If you miss your assigned discussions, there will be other discussion slots that you can take as a backup.
• Project (satisfactory/unsatisfactory). You'll create a (very narrowly scoped!) programming project that follows the AP CS Principles portfolio requirements and be assessed on the AP CS Principles rubric.

Here's how I'll convert the satisfactory/unsatisfactory marks above to UW's silly grade point system:

• 4.0: Satisfactory on at least 20 readings, both discussions, and your project
• 3.3: Satisfactory on at least 18 readings, at least one discussion, and your project
• 2.7: Satisfactory on at least 15 readings, at least one discussion, and your project.

I don't expect anyone to get lower than a 2.7, which is a passing grade to the graduate school. Read, engage, be prepared, and you'll be fine.

Late Assignments and Regrades

Your learning is more important than my time. Therefore:

• Any assignment can be late without penalty, up until Monday 5 pm of finals week (so that I have time to assess and submit final grades). If you submit after that, it gets an unsatisfactory. If you don't want that to happen you can request an incomplete.
• You can resubmit any reading for a regrade, as many times as you like, up until Monday 5pm of finals week. Any resubmissions after that time will not be regraded.

Missing Class

There is no penalty for missing class (other than you missing out on learning).