Overview

Over the past four years the National Science Foundation has significantly invested in the creation of research-practice partnerships in the K12 CS education space. Complementary to that investment, the CS education community has embraced the methods of research practice partnerships in order to understand the ongoing problems of practice in CS education, and the interventions designed to address them. The goal of RPPs, especially in the CS education arena, is to elevate the voices of teachers, practitioners, and students in the research and decision making around the design and development of high quality CS education approaches. Although RPPs often come together initially in response to a particular opportunity for funding, RPPs themselves are meant to transcend individual funding opportunities or projects and result in long term partnerships building deep knowledge.

 

We invite the submissions of papers to appear in a workshop publication and be accompanied by presentations to the RPPforCS community and other interested parties in the summer of 2021. 

 

Call for Participation

As research practice partnerships mature, it is worthwhile to explore the partnerships, activities, and measurement which contributes to the success of individual projects. The RPPforCS project has engaged with the community through webinars, research briefs, theme studies, and sharing of information in more informal outputs. 

 

We are seeking workshop papers focusing on the aspects of research practice partnerships that have contributed to project learnings or outcomes. Recognizing the description of the research practice partnership and design-based approach to the research, we welcome papers that focus on the problem of practice and iterative nature of RPPs and recognize that research questions may shift over time. Topics for papers should include as a core part a description of the research practice partnership and address one or more of the following components of project efforts:

• RPP specific activities used to create, build, or sustain the partnership, including capacity building efforts related to the RPPs

• Engaging partnership members in problem identification, shared exploration of data or co-designing interventions

• Creating shared definitions of equity and broadening participation connected to understanding research questions and problems of practice

• RPP specific activities’ contribution to the overall project goals of high quality CS education

• How the project measures success in affecting CS education or broadening participation.

 

In addition to a focus on the design and implementation of the partnership, papers should include how the RPP structure affected project specific findings such as:

• Student learning outcomes

• Curriculum design and development

• Pedagogical tool design and implementation

• Teacher professional learning

• Institutional pathway creation

• Implementation of CS education efforts at scale

 

As accepted papers are likely to be published in an ACM International Conference Proceedings publication (application under review at this time), all papers must adhere to ACM standards for publication of unique findings (including guidance on self-plagiarism).

 

Workshop papers will be limited to 10 pages with an additional page for references allowed with formatting requirements detailed in the proceedings template (ACM Standard) by ACM. 

 

Timeline and Important Dates

• May 5, 2021 - Call for papers announced

• May 30, 2021 - Authors must submit a 250 word abstract highlighting the intended focus of the paper.

• June 15, 2021 - The workshop team will communicate acceptance of abstracts and invitations to submit full papers to the authors.

• August 2021 (Exact Dates to be Announced) - Workshop presentations by authors

• August 15, 2021 - The authors will submit papers for final review.

• August 30, 2021 - Authors will receive notification of paper acceptance.

• Fall 2021 - Workshop publication will be released.