Jane Margolis

Unlocking the clubhouse: the Carnegie Mellon experience

In the fall of 1995, just seven of 95 students entering the undergraduate program in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University were women. In 2000, 54 of 130, or 42%, were women. What happened? This article presents a brief history of the transformation at Carnegie Mellons School of Computer Science, and the research project that lay behind it. A fuller discussion, set in an analysis of gender issues in computing from childhood through college, is found in our book, Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing [2].The story begins with a research study designed specifically to diagnose and find remedies for the gender gap in Carnegie Mellons undergraduate computer science program. Female enrollment had hovered below 10% for a number of years, and the fraction of women leaving the program was approximately twice that for men. In 1995, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation funded our proposal for a two-year program, which was followed up two years later with a two-year extension. The goal was to understand the experiences and choices of both men and women with respect to studying computer science, and to design interventions that would involve more women.

Undergraduate women in computer science: experience, motivation and culture

For the past year, we have been studying the experiences of undergraduate women studying computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, with a specific eye toward understanding the influences and processes whereby they attach themselves to or detach themselves from the field. This report, midway through the two-year project, recaps the goals and methods of the study, reports on our progress and preliminary conclusions, and sketches our plans for the final year and the future beyond this particular project.

Exploring Computer Science: A Case Study of School Reform

This article will detail efforts to broaden participation in computing in urban schools through a comprehensive reform effort of curricular development, teacher professional development, and policy changes. Beginning with an account of the curricular development of Exploring Computer Science, we will describe the inquiry-based research that underlies these learning materials. Next, we argue that accompanying professional development that supports the curriculum is essential for supporting this inquiry-based approach to computer science instruction. We then explain the policy strategies used to designate this course as a college-preparatory elective and place it in 17 Los Angeles high schools. Finally, we share the initial results of how students experience this course and ongoing challenges encountered when working in the public school system. The article concludes with a discussion of how longitudinal reform effort requires a strong foundation and deep roots to successfully democratize computer science education.

Beyond curriculum: the exploring computer science program

➧1 In the past few decades, computer science has driven innovation across a variety of academic fields and become a robust part of democratic participation and the labor economy. Today’s youth are surrounded with applications of these new technologies that affect how they access and produce information and communicate with friends, family, and educators. Yet, though students often gain skills as “users” of these technologies in schools, too many have been denied opportunities to study computer science and produce new knowledge required to become “creators” of computing innovations. The students who do study computer science courses often represent only a narrow band of students that excludes significant numbers of girls and students of color. Further, for a field that depends on creativity, a homogenous workforce fails to take advantage of those with diverse experiences and world viewpoints that likely foster divergent and fresh thinking. This article will provide an overview of Exploring Computer Science (ECS), a curriculum and program developed to broaden participation in computing for high school students in the Los Angeles Unified School District. This program is framed around a three-pronged approach to reform: curricular development, teacher professional development, and policy work across a variety of educational institutions. The focus is to provide the necessary structures and support to schools and teachers that leads to high quality teaching and learning in computer science classrooms. In ECS classrooms, high quality teaching and learning is viewed within the frame of inquiry-based teaching strategies that lead to deep student content learning and engagement. The incorporation of equity-based teaching practices is an essential part of setting up the classroom culture that facilitates inquiry-based learning. As the second largest and one of the most diverse districts in the United States, the Los Angeles Unified School District provides an important context to understand opportunities and obstacles encountered while engaging in institutional K-12 computer science education reform. This article will begin with an account of the educational research that provided key information about the obstacles students encounter in computer science classrooms. Next, we will describe the key elements of the ECS program. Finally, we will highlight several lessons that we have learned that inform the CS 10K campaign (see Jan Cuny’s Critical Perspective “Transforming High School Computing: A Call to Action”, this issue).

Beyond access: broadening participation in high school computer science

Broadening participation” and “equity” are now common parlance among computer science reform educators who are challenging the underrepresentation in computer science. However, what do we all mean by these words and phrases? In this article, we discuss the key theoretical components of our strategy for broadening participation and increasing equity in computer science education. We do so through a description of our goals of our Exploring Computer Science program—a K-12/university collaboration between Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). For us, broadening participation goes beyond issues of access to computer science (CS) learning; we also must transform CS classroom culture and teaching in ways that engage and deepen how diverse students learn. High standards for learning and equity are two foundational elements that must be coupled together. Our mission goes beyond the “pipeline” issue of who ends up majoring in CS in college. Rather, our mission is to democratize CS learning and assure that all students have access to CS knowledge. In today’s world, this knowledge is a critical part of being an educated citizen1 and being qualified for 21st century opportunities across a growing number of fields and professions.

Democratizing computer science knowledge: transforming the face of computer science through public high school education

Despite the fact that computer science (CS) is the driver of technological innovations across all disciplines and aspects of our lives, including participatory media, high school CS too commonly fails to incorporate the perspectives and concerns of low-income students of color. This article describes a partnership program – Exploring Computer Science (ECS) – that directly counters this problem in our nations second largest school district. With a mission of democratizing CS learning, we argue that despite the constraints of working within public schools, it is imperative to do so. We discuss the ECS program based on inquiry, culturally relevant curriculum, and equity-oriented pedagogy. We describe two ECS-affiliated projects that highlight the importance of authorship, purpose, and agency for student learning and engagement: DietSens using mobile technology to study community health, and a project in which students create video games about social issues. Our work offers a counter-narrative to those who have written off the possibilities of working within public schools and a debunking of the too widespread myth within our educational system that females and students of color are inherently uninterested in rigorous CS learning.

An equity lens for scaling: a critical juncture for exploring computer science

The computer science education community has been on a wild ride recently. After decades of feeling like we were speaking to the wall, today numerous non-profits, industry, state and national politicians, policy makers, school districts, social media, and parents are beginning to pay attention and speak out of the need for more access to K-12 computer science education and for broadening participation in computing. As we write this article, a steady beat of news media has been covering the lack of diversity in technology and why computer science education is critically important. Even politicians are getting into the act. Broadening participation in computing has gone from being underthe-radar to being a presidential topic of attention. And along with this increase of attention have come opportunities to expand and scale up educational programs. Exploring Computer Science (ECS) is one of the programs that has expanded and scaled in the last five years. And, with this growth, come new questions, pressures, and challenges. We write this article at a time when we are reflecting on these challenges and questioning how we assure that the ECS mission of equity and democratizing computer science knowledge for all students remains strong. We begin the article with a brief summary of Exploring Computer Science development and expansion. We then review a part of our early history that exemplifies how numbers are often the first indicator of success in broadening participation, yet numbers can also be superficial and misleading. We follow this with a discussion of what we need to learn now, the challenges before us, and how we measure programmatic success. We hope that the questions posed in this article will be useful for the larger community and for programs that are also beginning to scale, whether they are ECS, Computer Science Principles, or other curricular efforts to broaden participation in computing.

It Takes a Village: Supporting Inquiry- and Equity-Oriented Computer Science Pedagogy through a Professional Learning Community.

This article describes the importance that high school computer science teachers place on a teachers’ professional learning community designed around an inquiry- and equity-oriented approach for broadening participation in computing. Using grounded theory to analyze four years of teacher surveys and interviews from the Exploring Computer Science (ECS) program in the Los Angeles Unified School District, this article describes how participating in professional development activities purposefully aimed at fostering a teachers’ professional learning community helps ECS teachers make the transition to an inquiry-based classroom culture and break professional isolation. This professional learning community also provides experiences that challenge prevalent deficit notions and stereotypes about which students can or cannot excel in computer science.

Ten Lessons for Computer Science for All

U S President Barack Obama’s agenda of Computer Science for All [26] brings an incredible opportunity for broadening participation in computing. Yet, along with this opportunity come risks and possible unintended consequences. As the authors of Stuck in the Shallow End: Education, Race, and Computing [17], we have spent almost two decades working with schools to increase our understanding of the pervasive inequities in computing for historically unrepresented students. In response to our initial research findings, we developed and implemented the national Exploring Computer Science (ECS) course for high schools across the country [8]. ECS consists of a year-long curriculum, on-going professional development and mentoring for teachers, and policy support to democratize computing for all students. Below are ten lessons we have learned about CS for All from our collective years as researchers, teacher educators, curriculum developers, policy advocates, and agents for social change.

Unlocking the clubhouse: a decade later and now what?

In the decade since Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing (MIT Press, 2002) was published, educational institutions have coalesced around the mission of increasing womens participation in computing. Yet, despite the uptick of interest in computer science majors and the surge of technology shaping all aspects of our lives, the numbers of women majoring in computer science are still abysmally small. In this talk, I will further reflect on why this is the case, and make connections to the issues raised in Stuck in the Shallow End: Education, Race, and Computing---the underrepresentation in computer science of students of color. I will examine how underrepresentation in computing relates to the larger educational crisis in this country and issues we face as world citizens. This talk is part of an overarching mission to understand how inequality is produced in this country and the types of social action required to equalize opportunities and broaden participation in computing.