Preparing Marginalised Students for Learning Computer Science: A Case Study of Teaching Computational Thinking to Underrepresented Middle School Youth

Abstract

This case study describes a university-middle school partnership aimed at preparing underserved youth for success in computer science (CS) and inspiring them to attend college.  The objectives of the partnership were a) to inspire youth from underrepresented demographic groups to believe they could study technology, b) prepare them for success in technology through teaching them computational thinking skills, and c) inspire them to attend college and major in CS. For three years, the partnership’s workshops, taught by computer science undergraduates who shared a racial/ethnic, social class, or gender identity with their pupils, taught computational thinking skills to 65 low-income, minoritised adolescents in middle school.  The variety of data used to assess the outcomes of the workshops included post-workshop student responses to surveys developed by the middle school educators, observations by the researchers, interviews with the undergraduate tutors and middle school CS teachers, and reflective essayswritten after each workshop by the undergraduate tutors.  Analyses of data strongly suggest that for most middle school participants, the workshops were successful. Workshops appear to undercut gender and race stereotypes of who belongs in CS, taught middle school pupils computational thinking skills, and inspired the participants to go to college and study technology.  In the absence of pre-tests of students’ prior levels of preparation and inspiration, findings only suggest that the intervention offers a strategy to both increase interest in and preparation for pursuing CS among underserved youth and, in doing so, may broaden the demographics of those participating in technology.