This article reports on a study investigating how computational essays can be used to help students in higher education STEM take up disciplinary epistemic agency--cognitive control and responsibility over one's own learning within the scientific disciplines. Computational essays are a genre of scientific writing that combine live, executable…

Students from underrepresented populations--females, working class, and youth from marginalized racial/ethnic groups--are less likely than their middle-class Asian and White male peers to study computer science (CS) in college. The dearth of CS undergraduates from these groups contributes to projected labor force shortages. Sources of the dilemma…