Preparing Teachers Regarding Ethical Reasoning in Computational Thinking

This project aims to serve the national need for preparing high quality secondary STEM teachers who can integrate ethical computational thinking into their teaching. Computational thinking has become an integral part of almost every STEM-related field and is increasingly necessary for secondary students’ access to STEM courses and related opportunities in high school and beyond.

In addition, multiple scholars have shown that the lack of attention to ethics in STEM research and development has had a negative impact on individuals, society, and the environment. North Carolina teachers have not been adequately supported to integrate computational thinking in their curriculum, much less with attention to ethics. This project will provide support to 24 secondary mathematics and science teaching candidates, each of whom will be matched with a secondary STEM teacher in a partnering high-need school district.

The teaching candidates and their secondary mentor teachers will participate in project activities to strengthen their own ethical computational thinking, as well as plan to use it in future lessons. Project activities include learning basic Python coding and engaging in four modules around computational thinking in data science, nanoscience, geography and earth science, and engineering, with ethics fore-fronted in each module.

Teaching candidates and mentor teachers will design, implement, reflect on, and analyze the effectiveness of their ethically grounded computational thinking lessons.

This project at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Charlotte includes a partnership with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS), the largest school district in North Carolina serving over 150,000 students. Project goals include developing ethical computational thinking (ECT) in three cohorts of eight mathematics and science undergraduate teaching candidates (24 total) over four years, together with 24 practicing secondary STEM teachers in the partner district.

The project aims to do this by consistently engaging teaching candidates and their mentor teachers in activities to develop their computational thinking with a clear focus on ethical implications. Through the evaluation of the project, researchers will gain insights into ways to recruit and develop secondary STEM teachers who are prepared to infuse ethical computational thinking into their teaching, thus better preparing their students to be more competitive when they enter the STEM workforce.

Findings will be disseminated to the research community through publications and presentations at local and national conferences and to the teaching community through the UNC Charlotte Center for STEM Education website that will house all ECT lessons. This Track 1 Scholarships and Stipends project is supported through the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program (Noyce).

The Noyce program supports talented STEM undergraduate majors and professionals to become effective K-12 STEM teachers and experienced, exemplary K-12 teachers to become STEM master teachers in high-need school districts. It also supports research on the persistence, retention, and effectiveness of K-12 STEM teachers in high-need school districts.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.