Social Studies of Computing

Multidisciplinary Research Group at McGill University

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Inclusive Teaching And Learning in Computer Science (ITALICS) Reading Group

This reading group examines the question: what is effective and inclusive pedagogy look like in CS? To answer this, this reading group will examine the pedagogy, sociology, and psychology of CS education. Each week we read a paper or short book chapter in advance of the meeting, and then discuss the reading as a group.

Are all welcome, including students, faculty, teachers, and members of the community. No background in education, psychology, or sociology is required nor expected.

To participate, join our mailing list, and read our Code of Conduct.

We meet weekly at 1PM on Wednesdays. Link to the video conferencing website is in each email from the mailing list. If you have any questions, feel free to contact the reading group organizer, Eric at eric [dot] mayhew [at] mail.mcgill.ca

Upcoming Readings

  1. July 27th, 2022: Making CS education critical intro
  2. August 3rd, 2022: Confronting race in critical CS ed
    Aman Yadav, Marie K. Heath. Breaking the Code: Confronting Racism in Computer Science through Community, Criticality, and Citizenship Association for Educational Communications & Technology 2022. April 12, 2022
  3. August 10th, 2022: Black critical CS ed
    Stephanie T. Jones, natalie araujo melo. We Tell These Stories to Survive: Towards Abolition in Computer Science Education. Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, volume 21. August 2021.
  4. August 17th, 2022: Barriers in confronting race for CS teachers
    Joanna Goode et al. Rac(e)ing to computer science for all: how teachers talk and learn about equity in professional development. Computer Science Education, Volume 31 Issue 3. September, 2021.
  5. August 24th, 2022: Towards an equitable, counter hegemonic CS pedagogy
    Ron Eglash et al. Counter-hegemonic Computing: Toward Computer Science Education for Value Generation and Emancipation. ACM Transactions on Computing Education, Vol. 21, No. 4, Article 29. Publication date: October 2021.

Past Readings

  1. February 6, 2018: defensive communication in the classroom
    Garvin-Doxas, Kathy, and Lecia J. Barker. "Communication in computer science classrooms: understanding defensive climates as a means of creating supportive behaviors." Journal on Educational Resources in Computing (JERIC) 4, no. 1 (2004): 2..
  2. February 13, 2018: translating from code to 'plain English'
    Murphy, Laurie, Sue Fitzgerald, Raymond Lister, and Renée McCauley. "Ability to 'explain in plain english' linked to proficiency in computer-based programming." In Proceedings of the ninth annual international conference on International computing education research, pp. 111-118. ACM, 2012.
  3. February 20 meeting cancelled for SIGCSE.
  4. February 27, 2018: global variation in female participation
    Mellström, Ulf. "The intersection of gender, race and cultural boundaries, or why is computer science in Malaysia dominated by women?." Social Studies of Science 39, no. 6 (2009): 885-907.
  5. March 6 meeting cancelled due to construction.
  6. March 13, 2018: team based learning
    Hu, Helen H., and Tricia D. Shepherd. "Using POGIL to help students learn to program." ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE) 13, no. 3 (2013): 13.
  7. March 19, 2018: subgoal labelling
    Morrison, Briana B., Lauren E. Margulieux, and Mark Guzdial. "Subgoals, context, and worked examples in learning computing problem solving." In Proceedings of the eleventh annual international conference on international computing education research, pp. 21-29. ACM, 2015.
  8. March 26, 2018: learning student names
    Middendorf, Joan, and Elizabeth Osborn. "Learning student names." In National Teaching and Learning Forum online: http://www. ntlf. com/html/lib/bib/names. htm. 1997.
    Optional second reading: Hanassab, Shideh. "Diversity, international students, and perceived discrimination: Implications for educators and counselors." Journal of Studies in International Education 10, no. 2 (2006): 157-172.
  9. April 3, 2018: soliciting and using student feedback
    Murray, Harry G. "Acquiring student feedback that improves instruction." New directions for teaching and learning 1987, no. 32 (1987): 85-96.
  10. April 10, 2018: teaching evaluations
    Neath, Ian. "How to improve your teaching evaluations without improving your teaching." Psychological Reports 78, no. 3_suppl (1996): 1363-1372.
  11. April 17, 2018: contextualized curricula
    Chapter 6 of Guzdial, Mark. "Learner-Centered Design of Computing Education". 2015.
  12. April 24, 2018: Cancelled for CHI (here in Montreal!)
  13. May 1, 2018: values of CS students
    Ferrario, Maria Angela, Will Simm, Stephen Forshaw, Adrian Gradinar, Marcia Tavares Smith, and Ian Smith. "Values-first SE: research principles in practice." In Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Software Engineering Companion, pp. 553-562. ACM, 2016.
  14. May 8, 2018: achivement goals
    Zingaro, Daniel, and Leo Porter. "Impact of student achievement goals on CS1 outcomes." In Proceedings of the 47th ACM technical symposium on Computing Science Education, pp. 279-296. ACM, 2016.
  15. May 15, 2018: author chat with Dan Zingaro
    Continuing to discuss the Zingaro and Porter paper from last week, this time with Dan Zingaro!
  16. May 22, 2018: understanding the statistics in education papers
    Goodman, Steven. "A dirty dozen: twelve p-value misconceptions." In Seminars in hematology, vol. 45, no. 3, pp. 135-140. Elsevier, 2008.
    PLUS! This series of youtube videos to watch
  17. May 29 meeting cancelled.
  18. Jun 5, 2018: "face saving" revisited
    Lundy, Garvey F. "The myths of oppositional culture." Journal of Black Studies 33, no. 4 (2003): 450-467.
  19. Jun 12, 2018: author chat with Briana Morrison
    Briana Morrison will join us by skype! We'll revisit her paper: Morrison, Briana B., Lauren E. Margulieux, and Mark Guzdial. "Subgoals, context, and worked examples in learning computing problem solving." In Proceedings of the eleventh annual international conference on international computing education research, pp. 21-29. ACM, 2015.
  20. Jun 19, 2018: faculty practices
    Barker, Lecia, Christopher Lynnly Hovey, and Jane Gruning. "What influences CS faculty to adopt teaching practices?" In Proceedings of the 46th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, pp. 604-609. ACM, 2015.
  21. Jun 26, 2018: TA development
    Patitsas, Elizabeth. "A case study of the development of CS teaching assistants and their experiences with team teaching." In Proceedings of the 13th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research, pp. 115-124. ACM, 2013.
  22. July 3, 2018: professor development
    Peter Kugel. How professors develop as teachers. Studies in higher education, 18(3):315–328, 1993.
  23. July 10, 2018: student development
    Hmelo‐Silver, Cindy E., and Merav Green Pfeffer. "Comparing expert and novice understanding of a complex system from the perspective of structures, behaviors, and functions." Cognitive Science 28, no. 1 (2004): 127-138.
  24. July 17, 2018: curriculum change
    Gruba, Paul, Alistair Moffat, Harald Søndergaard, and Justin Zobel. "What drives curriculum change?." In Proceedings of the Sixth Australasian Conference on Computing Education-Volume 30, pp. 109-117. Australian Computer Society, Inc., 2004.
  25. No meeting July 24 or 31.
  26. Aug 7, 2018: learning processes revisited
    Castro, Francisco Enrique Vicente, and Kathi Fisler. "Designing a multi-faceted SOLO taxonomy to track program design skills through an entire course." In Proceedings of the 17th Koli Calling Conference on Computing Education Research, pp. 10-19. ACM, 2017.
  27. No meeting Aug 14.
  28. No meeting Aug 21.
  29. Aug 28, 2018: group activity
  30. May 14, 2019: critical pedagogy for CS
    Vakil, Sepehr. "Ethics, identity, and political vision: Toward a justice-centered approach to equity in computer science education." Harvard Educational Review 88, no. 1 (2018): 26-52.
  31. May 21, 2019: culturally relevant pedagogy for CS
    Yuen, Timothy, Maria Arreguin-Anderson, Guadalupe Carmona, and Matthew Gibson. "A culturally relevant pedagogical approach to computer science education to increase participation of underrepresented populations." In 2016 International Conference on Learning and Teaching in Computing and Engineering (LaTICE), pp. 147-153. IEEE, 2016.
  32. Cancelled for May 28 and June 4 for ICSE and Congress respectively.
  33. June 11, 2019: teaching big classes
    Wolfman, Steven A. "Making lemonade: Exploring the bright side of large lecture classes." In ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 257-261. ACM, 2002.
  34. July 2, 2019: plagiarism (Note: from here on we'l be meeting approximately every 3-4 weeks)
    Fraser, Robert. "Collaboration, collusion and plagiarism in computer science coursework." Informatics in Education-An International Journal 13, no. 2 (2014): 179-195.
  35. January 13, 2021: CS Ethics education done wrong
    Williams, R. M., Smarr, S., Prioleau, D., & Gilbert, J. E. (2021). Oh No, Not Another Trolley! On the Need for a Co-Liberative Consciousness in CS Pedagogy. IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society.
  36. January 20, 2021: Integrating ethics with CS content
    Skirpan, M., Smarr, S., et al. (2018). Ethics Education in Context: A Case Study of Novel Ethics Activities for the CS Classroom. SIGCSE '18.
  37. January 27, 2021: Teaching conflict minerals in digital logic class
    Lord, S. M., Przestrzelski, B., Reddy, E. (2018). Teaching Social Responsibility: Conflict Minerals Module for a Circuits Class . IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society.
  38. February 3, 2022: defensive communication in the classroom
    Garvin-Doxas, Kathy, and Lecia J. Barker. "Communication in computer science classrooms: understanding defensive climates as a means of creating supportive behaviors." Journal on Educational Resources in Computing (JERIC) 4, no. 1 (2004): 2..
  39. February 10, 2022: enrollment policies and belonging
    An Nguyen, Colleen M. Lewis "Competitive Enrollment Policies in Computing Departments Negatively Predict First-Year Students’ Sense of Belonging, Self-Efficacy, and Perception of Department." SIGCSE '20
  40. February 17 2022: Peer mentorship programs
    Heather Pon-Barry, Audrey St. John, Becky Wai-Ling Packard, Barbara Rotundo. A Flexible Curriculum for Promoting Inclusion through Peer Mentorship. SIGCSE '19.
  41. February 24 2022: Teaching development for professors
    Peter Kugel. How professors develop as teachers. Studies in Higher Education, 1993.
  42. March 10 2022: Critical CS education
    Aleata Hubbard Cheuoua. Confronting Inequities in Computer Science Education: A Case for Critical Theory. SIGCSE 2021.
  43. March 17 2022: POGILs in CS from a faculty perspective
    Aman Yadav et al. POGIL in Computer Science: Faculty Motivation and Challenges. SIGCSE 2019.
  44. March 24 2022: Learning science and supporting learning
    Chapter 4 (Processes that support learning) from How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts, and Cultures
  45. March 31 2022: Learning science and supporting learning II
    Chapter 5 (Knowledge and reasoning) from How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts, and Cultures