CT to CS RPP
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Welcome to the CT to CS RPP
The Computational Thinking to Computer Science (CT to CS) Research-Practice Partnership brings together educators and researchers from the New York City Department of Education’s CSforAllNYC division, Cornell Tech, State University of New York at Buffalo, City University of New York, and the education evaluation firm, Partner to Improve to learn more about how to support computational thinking (CT) and computer science (CS) in NYC public elementary schools.
The project provides and studies the implementation of school-wide professional development and culturally relevant curriculum. Teachers learn to integrate CT vocabulary and problem-solving concepts as well as CS concepts and practices within English Language Arts and math. Our project seeks to shed light on the impact of learning and teaching computational thinking on computer science instruction.
More broadly, this project looks to build knowledge about computational thinking in the classroom and the transition from computational thinking to computer science. This is an emerging area of study. We hope to better understand how computational thinking looks in a classroom setting, explore teacher beliefs and confidence toward computational thinking and computer science, and determine whether there are opportunities for our approach to impact equity. We have a shared commitment to access for all students to an equitable, rigorous, and joyful computer science education.
Our Research Goals
- Explore elementary school teachers’ beliefs, confidence, and understandings regarding computational thinking and computer science, and how CT and CS overlap with core content areas.
- Understand how computational thinking looks within a classroom setting and the situations where it appears naturally.
- Uncover potential barriers to computational thinking and computer science education.
- Expand our definition of computational thinking.
- Determine whether there are opportunities for our computational thinking and computer science approach to impact equity.
Our Practice Goals
- Create rich computing learning opportunities that can be adopted by general education teachers without prior computer science experience.
- De-mystify computational thinking and computer science concepts for general education teachers.
- Provide open source computational thinking and computer science curriculum and teacher professional development modules that are easily adaptable.
- Identify levers for making computational thinking and computer science scalable in NYC public schools in pursuit of CSforAllNYC.
