About the Project

A Community-Wide Effort to Reimagine CS in High School

Project Summary

Reimagining CS Pathways is a community-wide project that explores how CS learning opportunities can be reenvisioned for high school students. CSTA and IACE co-led the project, in partnership with ACM, Code.org, College Board, CSforALL, and ECEP Alliance.

This project resulted in:

Recommendations on the foundational content that should be included in courses or experiences satisfying a high school graduation requirement;
Examples of high school CS pathways that extend beyond the foundational content;
Guidance for implementation of these pathways and how to integrate CS content into other subject areas; and
A framework that enables a systematic and deliberate process for examining and re-creating similar pathways in the future.

Project Values

Equity-centered

Promotes broad and equitable access, participation, and experiences in CS education among all high school students.

Community-generated

Meets the needs of the community, including K-12 educators, postsecondary institutions, students, parents, and industry.

Future-oriented

Anticipates future needs of current high school learners, and prepares them for a future that is increasingly reliant on computing.

Grounded in research

Reflects the evolving body of knowledge of how students learn CS.

Flexible in implementation

Considers multiple pathways for meeting individual needs of learners, including regional, cultural, ability, social, and economic factors.

Process

The process to reimagine CS pathways was centered around hosting a series of three in-person convenings with experts from K-12, higher education, and industry across the United States. These convenings were complemented by other research, including focus groups, interviews, and literature reviews. After synthesizing data from multiple sources, we drafted and refined reports, with several rounds of feedback.

The full report provides more details about this process, the people involved, and the challenges we faced. It also provides a toolkit for replicating this process in the future and in local contexts.

Image Description

The image shows a five-step process as follows:

The first step is called Generate Project Goals, with the text: Project Team uses evidence from previous research and practice combined with past experience to establish project goals, number of convenings, and goals for the convenings.

The next step is called Identify Participants, with the text: Steering Committee and Project Team select convening participants using an application process that prioritizes deep experience and diversity across a variety of factors, including geographic, expertise, role, demographic, and institution type.

The next step is called Plan Convening, with the text: Steering Committee and Project Team identity location, timeframe, activities, speakers, and desired outcomes for the convening based on existing research and experiences focused on various student and school demographics.

The next step is called Hold Convening, with the text: Convening participants hear from researcher and practitioner panelists and speakers who are experts in relevant areas and engage in discussions and activities to meet the outcomes.

The final step is called Write Report, with the text: Project Team writes a report with a broad perspective of types of schools and students (i.e., differently resourced schools, students with disabilities.)

The words “repeat for the total total three convenings” appear above the steps Plan Convening, Hold Convening, and Write Report.

The bottom of the graphic shows another timeline, with details of the process for report writing as follows;

Clean and code data. Project Team compiles data and artifacts from convening and prepares data for analysis.
Analyze and compare with research. Steering committee and project team analyze data from convenings and compare findings with research to validate and support recommendations.
Prepare report draft. Project team uses the analysis from the convening data and related research to prepare the draft report.
Review draft report. Steering committee and advisory board review the draft report and meet with project team to share feedback.
Revise draft report. Project team uses feedback from steering committee and advisory board to revise the report.
Review draft report. Project team shares the report with convening participants and members of the broader community for asynchronous review.
Prepare final report. Project team uses feedback from the convening participants and asynchronous reviewers to prepare, publish, and share the final report.