[CS] Minh Tran MS Presentation/Apr 30, 2025

[via cs]

This is an announcement of Minh Tran's MS Presentation
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Candidate: Minh Tran

Date: Wednesday, April 30, 2025

Time:  9 am CST

Location: JCL 298

Remote Location: https://uchicago.zoom.us/j/96977136734?pwd=gcphmMMAsHmiiKMbanfPktZONURyXU.1 
(Meeting ID: 969 7713 6734; Passcode: 449517)

Title: Teacher Decisions and Practices in Creating Localized Culturally Responsive Computing Materials through Scaffolding and Professional Development

Abstract: The growing presence of computer science in K-8 classrooms has led to the need for instructional materials that support all learners. While fully featured curricula designed to connect to students' cultures and backgrounds exist, no single curriculum can encompass the plurality of learners now and over time. As experts on their own classrooms, teachers are best positioned to customize materials to fit their students. However, creating custom contextualized materials is challenging and time-consuming for many teachers.

This paper introduces a three-pronged approach to support teachers in efficiently creating custom contextualized Scratch projects and associated student-facing worksheets for a Use-Modify learning activity. We piloted and evaluated this approach in a five-day professional development workshop with 19 upper elementary and middle school teachers from across the U.S. With our support, participating teachers successfully customized a Use-Modify lesson in under 3 hours. We analyzed 28 teacher-produced projects for (1) technical alignment between the custom materials and the base materials and (2) decisions they made about choosing contextual themes and meaningful elements from students' lives to incorporate into the projects. Analysis revealed that (1) the majority of teachers were able to create custom materials that remained within the structured conceptual sequence of the base materials, and (2) teachers tended to draw inspiration from school-based community themes or kids' interests as opposed to students' family cultures. Further, we identified four approaches teachers used to integrate specific themes and cultural elements into their custom projects.

This work advances our understanding of how teachers customize instructional materials to align with their students' cultural backgrounds and prior experiences and how to support teachers in drawing on their localized expertise to create custom contextualized learning experiences for their classrooms.

Advisor: Diana Franklin

Committee: Diana Franklin, ​​​​Marshini Chetty​, David Weintrop, Colleen Lewis