Friday, Oct. 28, was no ordinary day for Bill Penuel, professor of learning sciences and human development. Penuel was invited to the White House to work with a group of state teams tasked with implementation of President Obama’s Computer Science (CS) for All initiative.
The CS for All: State-level Research and Action Summit aimed to strengthen connections between research and practice. The event was organized by the White House’s , the , and .
Launched in January 2016, the initiative aims to empower all American students from kindergarten through high school to learn computer science and be equipped with the computational thinking skills they need to be creators in the digital economy and active citizens in our technology-driven world. Our nation’s leaders are increasingly recognizing that computer science is a “new basic” skill, and nine out of ten parents surveyed in 2015 said they want CS taught at their child’s school. Yet, wide disparities exist in the tech industry and within schools, particularly for girls and students of color. The initiative calls for expanded state and school district funding to support teachers and expand access to K-12 computer science courses and quality instruction materials for all students.
Penuel, co-principal investigator for the Research+Practice Collaboratory, and colleagues brought examples to state teams working on CS for All initiatives of how research-practice partnerships have added value to efforts to promote large scale implementation of equitable change in education. Making education reform systematic and sustainable requires cross-sector efforts with shared goals and meaningful data collection that can inform practice.
At the summit, learning sciences researchers, practitioners, and state teams discussed how research-practice partnerships can help the field identify key questions and areas for building and sustaining evidence-based practice. They explored how research-practice partnerships can improve our understanding of what works and why. State teams shared their efforts and successes, and together the teams benchmarked where the states are today and identified most pressing needs.
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