Emotions play a crucial role in knowledge acquisition and can significantly impact motivation when studying a new field. Unfortunately, young people, especially girls, are often not drawn to Computer Science. To address this issue, we conducted an analysis of emotions among 8-9-year-old and 12-13-year-old students engaged in Computational Thinking…

Background and Context: Differences in children's and adolescents' initial attitudes about computing and other STEM fields may form during middle school and shape decisions leading to career entry. Early emerging differences in career interest may propagate a lack of diversity in computer science and programming fields. Objective: Though middle…

This study examined student learning outcomes from a middle school computer science (CS) curriculum developed through a researcher and practitioner partnership (RPP) project. The curriculum is based on students creating mobile apps that serve community and social good. We collected two sets of data from 294 students in three urban districts: (1)…

In this study, which was situated in the context of information science instruction, data were collected twice using student self-reports to examine the effects of pedagogical practices on changes in boys' and girls' expectancy and value beliefs about computing. Participants were 326 7th-grade students, enrolled in three middle schools that were…