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Good (and Bad) Reasons to Teach All Students Computer Science

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New Directions for Computing Education

Abstract

Recently everyone seems to be arguing that all students should learn computer science and/or learn to program. I agree. I see teaching all students computer science to be essential to counteracting our history and present state of differential access by race, class, and gender to computer science learning and computing-related jobs. However, teaching computer science is not a silver bullet or panacea. The content, assumptions, and implications of our arguments for teaching computer science matter. Some of the common arguments for why all students need to learn computer science are false; some do more to exclude than to expand participation in computing. This chapter seeks to deconstruct the many flawed reasons to teach all students computer science to help identify and amplify the good reasons.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This is also one dimension of the current argument for teaching all students “computational thinking” (Wing 2006). Other dimensions of this argument cut across the majority of the eight arguments discussed in this chapter.

  2. 2.

    We can use the College Board’s Advanced Placement Computer Science A exam (AP CS A exam) test-taking rates as a proxy to measure differential access to K-12 computer science instruction. Test-takers who select one of the following demographic options are underrepresented in AP CS test-taking in comparison to their proportion of the US population: female, American Indian, Black, Mexican American, Puerto Rican, and Other Hispanic. While these demographic options provided by the College Board are idiosyncratic, they demonstrate a clear pattern of underrepresentation.

  3. 3.

    By “college” I mean post-secondary education such as community college and 4-year colleges and universities.

  4. 4.

    “Exactly how many is a lot?” is a tricky question. Even given detailed projections by the United States Department of Labor: Bureau of Labor Statistics (www.bls.gov), the job classifications do not map clearly to computer science or programming jobs. As an estimate, the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT) reports that by 2024 there will be 1.1 million computing-related job openings in the USA (2016, ncwit.org/bythenumbers).

  5. 5.

    It is reasonable to direct our attention to removing these barriers, which I believe must be done in addition to providing all K-12 students computer science instruction.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially funded by National Science Foundation grant #1339404. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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  1. Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, USA

    Colleen M. Lewis

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  1. Colleen M. Lewis
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computing and Information Studies, Washington & Jefferson College , WASHINGTON, Pennsylvania, USA

    Samuel B. Fee

  2. CIS, Washington & Jefferson Coll CIS, Washington, Pennsylvania, USA

    Amanda M. Holland-Minkley

  3. University of the Virgin Islands, St. Thomas, VI, Washington & Jefferson College, CIS Department, Washington, Pennsylvania, USA

    Thomas E. Lombardi

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Lewis, C.M. (2017). Good (and Bad) Reasons to Teach All Students Computer Science. In: Fee, S., Holland-Minkley, A., Lombardi, T. (eds) New Directions for Computing Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54226-3_2

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