By John McDonald, UCLA School of Ed& IS Magazine
The lack of equity in computer science education has long been easy to see. It’s there in Black and white and Brown, and among girls and boys. While participation in computer science has grown, students of color, low-income, and female students remain underrepresented in the field. Just 45% of high schools offer computer science. Black and Latino students are four times less likely to take the Advanced Placement course in computer science than their white and Asian peers. Female participation in computer science is well below half of male exam takers in AP courses.
The UCLA Computer Science Equity Project is working to change that. With a focus on equity, the program is engaged in significant research that informs and shapes educational practice and public policy to increase access to high quality K-12 computer science education.
“We believe computer science is foundational, and all kids should have access to it,” says Julie Flapan, director of the project. “The heart of our research is looking at how teaching and learning opportunities are distributed in computer science education, why disparities in access exist across lines of race, gender and income, and how can we close those gaps. Our research is designed to strengthen educational practice and inform policy to eliminate the barriers to equitable opportunities.”
The research effort by the CS Equity Project grows in part from the early work of UCLA Department of Education senior researcher Jane Margolis, whose 2008 book, “Stuck in the Shallow End,” shone a light on gaps in access to computer science education and the implications for future opportunities. MIT Press described the book as, “a story of how inequality is reproduced in America—and how students and teachers, given the necessary tools, can change the system.”
The CS Equity Project has used their research to pursue that cause with a passion.
Part of UCLA Center X, the CS Equity Project has grown into a nationally recognized research organization conducting quantitative and qualitative research examining structural inequalities such as access to courses and teachers and the quality of curriculum and pedagogy. The work challenges belief systems or stereotypes about the types of students that can excel in computer science, and informs and supports educational policies to increase students’ access, opportunities and learning.
“We are working at the intersection of research, practice and policy to expose the root causes of inequality and build systemic, scalable, and sustainable support for teaching and learning computer science in California,” Flapan says.
You can see that approach and strategy across the work from the earliest days of the CS Equity Project to now.
When the CS Equity Project first started with Margolis and Joanna Goode researching why there were so few Black and Brown students studying computer science, they realized they didn’t want to do research that just went on to sit on the shelf. They wanted to apply what they learned to the classroom.
