Our multidisciplinary RPP team of educators, researchers, and content specialists will investigate and address problems of practice related to the integration of CS and CT into elementary STEM and social studies curricula in authentic and productive transdisciplinary ways. We will focus on the specific needs of EL students as we modify curricula and design teacher professional learning experiences. Our work will be rooted in issues related to sustainability, as the complexity and scale of such issues provide a rich context for leveraging CS/CT in transdisciplinary ways. Our specific objectives, related to the goals listed in the Introduction’s first paragraph, are to:
- Productively engage an existing researcher-practitioner partnership (RPP) to investigate and address problems of practice related to integrating CS and CT into transdisciplinary elementary education.
- Develop and test design principles for modifying existing elementary school curricula to include Maryland State Computer Science Standards that specifically meet the needs of English language learners.
- Develop a teacher professional learning (PL) model for CS/CT integration that supports language minority students as part of a course for in-service teachers in a transdisciplinary STEM M.Ed. program.
- Create and digitally publish a series of multimedia modules for the integration of CS/CT into elementary school (anchored in issues of sustainability) consisting of sample lesson materials, video clips, instructional support materials, and teacher PL activities.
- Conduct research on the RPP’s efforts to integrate CS/CT into linguistically diverse elementary classrooms engaged in interdisciplinary STEM lessons and units.
