Student Voices: Equity, Identity, and Agency in CS Classrooms

As the CS for All movement spreads nationwide, it is critical to continue to collect detailed information about students' learning experiences in order to understand if and how historically underrepresented youth in CS-including students of color, low-income students, and females-are gaining opportunities to feel empowered to pursue CS or incorporate CS into their future learning, personal interests, and/or career pathways. In this poster, we share our working definition of equity that sits at the heart of our our project entitled “Researching Equity, Access, and Learning in CS Education (REAL-CS),” as well as our mission to highlight the voices and experiences of high school students historically underrepresented in CS who have had little to no prior experience with CS. Our poster shares preliminary findings from surveys administered to over 2,000 Los Angeles CS students about their interests and how they see their passions and concerns connected (or not) to computer science. The poster also summarizes our broader research methods-including student interviews and classroom observations conducted in a research-practice partnership where educators and administrators work closely together with the UCLA research team through every stage of the research project, from development of data collection protocols to data analysis. Through this poster we will introduce RESPECT participants to our 3-year research project taking place in CS high school classrooms across Los Angeles, Mississippi, and the Northeast.