Supporting a rural research-practice partnership’s growth, progression, and scalability: Collaboratively designing a community garden-based computer science-rich curriculum

This project will work in partnership with a rural school district and two community organizations to collaboratively design an innovative middle school computer science-rich curriculum that highlights sustainable food production in local community gardens. Building upon an established rural research practice partnership, the project will generate opportunities for middle school students to engage in computer science learning grounded in serving their community, where many families face food insecurity.

The open-source garden-based curriculum will integrate physical computing systems and 3D visualization software, aligned with established computer science and disciplinary science standards, and provide students with authentic learning experiences that promote personally meaningful connections to computer science in their local community. The curriculum will utilize a place-based approach that enables students to deeply explore computer science concepts and identify “invisible” computer science opportunities in their community.

In addition to curriculum development, this project will focus heavily on the progression and growth of a rural research-practice partnership, including forming sustainable partnerships between the school district and local organizations that share the goal of promoting rural students’ participation in computer science education.

This project will generate knowledge and theory by adopting new methods for conceptualizing and investigating students’ perceptions of belonging in computer science in an established rural research-practice partnership. In doing so, researchers will utilize a design-based research approach to examine (1) how the curriculum helps to foreground students’ engagement, interest, and belonging in computer science, and (2) how the research practice partnership progresses to become more sustainable and scalable.

The following three research questions will be addressed: 1) How can an existing rural research-practice partnership be leveraged to support the collaborative design and implementation of a community garden-based computer science-rich curricula? 2) How does the collaborative design of a community garden-based computer science-rich curricula support convergence between stakeholders to promote growth and progression of the research-practice partnership to become transformational and scalable? 3) To what extent does the computer science-rich curriculum stimulate interest, engagement, and a sense of belonging among rural youth and increase their understanding of targeted computer science concepts? To answer these questions, the project team will use a mixed-methods approach to analyze both qualitative and quantitative data collected during iterative cycles of computer science-rich curricular collaborative design, classroom implementation, and other partnership-sustaining activities.

By studying the community partnerships cultivated in the research-practice partnership, the project will advance the theory of scaling to include strategic connections at local, state, and national levels. Study results can inform other research-practice partnership efforts aimed at crafting computer science-rich curriculum and integrating physical computing (e.g., programmable sensors) into K-12 education.

This project is funded through the Computer Science for All: Research and RPPs program.

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.