摘要:
Computer science education is more important than ever. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted our society's reliance on computing and its power to help businesses innovate and adapt, yet at the same time has surfaced greater disparities for students studying computer science. Computing is the number one source of all new wages in our economy, and there are currently 400,000 open computing jobs across the United States. However, unequal access to computer science instruction and opportunities to engage in computational thinking and practices remain prevalent (Google & Gallup, 2015). In the 2018-19 school year, only 15 percent of Maryland graduates took at least one computing related course, and there were significant gaps in the course taking patterns by gender and race (Maryland Center for Computing Education, 2021). To grow students' competencies with computational thinking and computer science, it is essential to build the capacity of teachers to integrate computational thinking competencies and standards into their practice. The Frostburg State University College of Education's Maryland Accelerates (MA) Program provides aspiring teachers the opportunity to earn an accelerated Master of Arts in Teaching (Elementary or Secondary track) degree along with an innovative yearlong teacher residency in partnership with Frederick and Garrett County Public Schools. One of the primary goals of the program is to integrate mathematical problem solving and computational thinking to promote scientific inquiry in partnering elementary and secondary schools. To this end, Frostburg State University has developed an exciting opportunity for Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) students to earn a microcredential in Computational Thinking that is aligned to the ISTE Educator Standards, the High Leverage Practice Standards from TeachingWorks, and the Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium InTASC Model as part of their teacher preparation program. In this panel, faculty from