VSTE Annual Conference 2022

The popular “Exploring Computer Science” (ECS) curriculum, written by Gail Chapman and Joanna Goode, has been widely adopted across Virginia and the United States over the last several years. It has successfully broadened access to computer science education to many students and teachers, and set the bar for equity-conscious computer science instruction for the CS education field since its publication. While this curriculum was originally designed for high school students, many Virginia teachers have not been able to implement it because it fails to address some of the high school Virginia Standards of Learning. Furthermore, because of its national scope, Virginia teachers may find it difficult to integrate the ECS curriculum into existing AP computer science or Career & Technical Education course pathways.

In this session, participants will explore new instructional material developed to supplement the Exploring Computer Science curriculum to make it more accessible to Virginia middle and high school computer science educators. These new lesson plans replace the Scratch coding material in ECS with text-based Python content, allowing educators to use the ECS curriculum in the context of a pre-AP or CTE course. Further, these new materials extend ECS’s original commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion by aligning to the recent Kapor Center framework, which establishes a new set of guidelines for inclusive computer science education for the CS education field. Throughout the session, participants will engage with the following questions: What education policies should a computer science curriculum align with to meet the needs of my students and community? What is the role of foundational computing coursework in broadening participation in computer science? Where does a foundational computer science course fit in my school’s CS or CTE course pathway? At the end of the session, participants will receive access to around 40 free supplementary lesson plans created by CodeVA that they can implement with their students in foundational computing coursework.