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This quarterly publication is a quarterly journal that publishes refereed articles addressing issues of computing as it impacts the lives of people with disabilities. The journal will be of particular interest to SIGACCESS members and delegrates to its affiliated conference (i.e., ASSETS), as well as other international accessibility conferences.
been demanded from AP Computer Science teachers. As a result, many teachers cannot or will not continue to teach this course and drop off as each adjustment to the course content is revealed. Without course and instructor availability, fewer students have the opportunity to learn any foundational knowledge of computer science.
Another cause of this low participation can be attributed to the low numbers of females and minority students who enroll in the course. Only 17% of exam-takers in the two 2007 AP Computer Science exams were females, representing the lowest rate of female participation in any AP course. Additionally, only a combined 11% of exam-takers were African Americans, American Indians, or Latinos. Clearly, it is difficult to maintain courses that attract such a low representation of the student body.
My line of research has determined that these low participation rates can be attributed to a misunderstanding of the computer science discipline by students, parents, and educators alike; a minimal number of computer science role models who are females or minorities; a representation of the course as difficult and boring; a set of teacher and counselor belief systems that make assumptions about who would do well in this course; a deficiency of student support outside of the classroom; a shortage of qualified teachers; a lack of availability of the course in high-minority and high-pov-erty schools; and weak and even disengaging pedagogical approaches in the classroom setting. Until we begin addressing these issues, the lack of diversity in computer science courses will continue to impact enrollment and limit the creativity that shapes the computing discipline.
A third cause of this low enrollment in the AP Computer Science program concerns the content of the courses themselves. The “A” course, for example, has focused almost exclusively on object-oriented programming methodology, algorithms, data structures, and abstraction. Though these topics are certainly at the core of many first-year college courses, they are not necessarily the most attractive topics to students who experience more exciting applications of computing in their
recreational and academic domains. The current AP program fails to make explicit the connections between computer science and modern technologies that students are familiar with. Except for the most technologically engaged students, the AP Computer Science course falls short in capturing the excitement of this discipline for 21st century youth. However, the College Board’s aim is to duplicate the most common type of introductory computer science content in higher education. Thus, university faculty must address this issue in their own curriculum to drive changes in the AP course and draw more students into the K–university computing pipeline.
Of course, other non-AP computing courses are regularly offered in high schools, such as Web design, animation, robotics, and desktop publishing. Students show more interest in these courses due to the easier entry points and the ability to integrate their own interests into the course content by designing Web pages, animations, and other creations of their own choosing. However, extensive qualitative research conducted by my colleagues and I demonstrates that the design of these courses typically focuses more on skill development and less on the theoretical underpinnings of computing. Correspondingly, these courses are often located in the vocational education department.
These research findings, detailed in our recently published book, Stuck in the Shallow End: Education, Race, and Computing,a reveal how examples of assignments in these courses include utilizing illustration software to duplicate yellow-page advertisements, creating simple animated characters using drawing programs, and creating static Web pages with basic Web development software layout templates. Rather than learning about the science that underlies the technology, students are directed to become users of preexisting software applications. As a result, these courses rarely qualify as college-preparatory electives, so few college-bound students enroll.
Recently, other promising courses
a J. Margolis et al., Stuck in the Shallow End: Education, Race, and Computing. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2008.
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