蜜桃传媒

As a $1 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant concludes, Chris Hoadley, director of the UB Institute for Learning Sciences and professor in the Graduate School of Education, reflects on the project that has not only influenced computer science (CS) education across New York, but is also helping define how future teachers nationwide will be trained to reach all students.

The project, , emerged from a “Computer Science for All” initiative that sought to expand access to CS education nationwide. New York City responded early, launching its own program in 2015 with the goal of ensuring that every public school student receives meaningful CS instruction by 2025. The initiative gained traction through public-private partnerships with major technology companies and philanthropists.

Hoadley was on the faculty at New York 蜜桃传媒 at the time and part of the initiative. “Our project did a lot of research on how multilingual kids could best be supported in learning computer science, and our research led to teacher training that helped teachers support multilingual and monolingual learners,” Hoadley says.

Approached by the city of New York to support its “Computer Science for All” efforts, Hoadley says a group of teacher educators and scholars from around the country got together, and by 2021 were part of a core team helping train all the CS teachers in the city on how to reach all kids.

“That ultimately led to something I’m very excited about: We have handed over a complete open educational resource textbook to SUNY Press on how to help computer science teachers reach all their students more equitably,” Hoadley says.

The open educational resource (OER) is a textbook for K–12 CS educators. Built on years of collaboration with the New York City Department of Education, the textbook is designed to support teachers working with multilingual and bilingual learners — an often-overlooked population in traditional CS education. It also includes help for teachers navigating race, ethnicity and special education. And unlike prior resources, the new OER textbook offers a sustainable, financially accessible tool for educators.

Currently being beta-tested in graduate-level courses at both UB and NYU, the textbook is already being used in UB’s CS teacher-preparation program. And for training teachers already working in schools, it marks a significant shift from past training models, replacing one-off PowerPoint decks and live workshops with a structured, scalable and free resource accessible to educators everywhere.

The book, “Advancing Educational Equity in Computer Science: A Guide for Educators and Their Allies,” is now .

“It’s free to download and intentionally designed to be more than a temporary training manual — it’s a foundation for long-term curricular change and a way to extend the project’s reach far beyond the NSF grant,” Hoadley says. “This textbook is the legacy of what we’ve built. It allows the work to continue in classrooms we may never directly reach.”

Hoadley says the textbook and broader training efforts were shaped by partnerships with key figures like Christy Crawford of the New York City Public Schools, who played a leadership role in teacher professional development. While UB, CUNY and NYU have served as academic anchors, the project also indirectly supported related efforts at CUNY’s Computing Integrated Teacher Education, where collaborator Sara Vogel helped integrate inclusive CS practices into faculty development.

“In undergrad computer science programs and in K–12 CS education, we now teach kids how to communicate in tech spaces, collaborate on problem-solving and engage with users,” Hoadley says. “UB is a leader in training people to teach computer science. Our programs in that space are brand new. There aren’t many people in them yet, but we’re bringing in some talented individuals.”

Building on this momentum, UB is partnering with the Buffalo Public Schools to open a new 蜜桃传媒-Assisted Community School (UACS) — a high school that will emphasize computer science as a central theme. The initiative, recently announced in , represents a community-based approach to preparing students for the digital economy and ensuring that underserved populations aren’t left behind.

The new school will integrate advanced computer literacy across all subjects. A shift toward project-based learning will help prepare students for future New York State assessments. Students will also benefit from opportunities to collaborate with UB professors and students, including potential dual-enrollment programs.

“Today’s computing intersects with everything — digital humanities, bioinformatics, data science,” Hoadley notes.

“CS education must evolve beyond coding. It should teach students to understand and critique the digital systems that permeate every part of society. Our educational systems need to reflect that.”