Many middle school students come to Computer Science (CS) classes without any previous CS instruction or any Computational Thinking (CT) skills that are needed to be successful. To overcome this, many curriculums and programming environments have been used to engage students and to instill a love of CS. Which curriculum should be used to develop…

Quantum mechanics is notoriously challenging, and research has found that students struggle with many common difficulties when learning it. It is also proving to be a critical piece of many exciting fields that are all but assured to see great development and expansion in the coming years; the Second Quantum Revolution is upon us. Quantum…

Initiatives geared toward broadening participation in computing research have addressed the longstanding underrepresentation of various populations - including women, Black people, Latinx people, and persons with disabilities. Although there has been an increase in underrepresented populations participating in computing, building upon these…

The purpose of this study was to explore how elementary school teachers think about equity in relation to their goals in their computer science instruction, and to explore the strategies they articulated to make their practice more equitable. States are mandating computer science standards and instruction and requiring schools to teach the content…

Introductory computer programming (i.e. CS1) is the entry point into the computer science major at higher education institutions worldwide. It introduces foundational concepts to students that are then built upon in future courses. Computer science as a whole has struggled to attract and retain students in the major, particularly women and…

Efforts to increase the participation of groups historically underrepresented in computing studies, and in the computing workforce, are well documented. It is a national effort with funding from a variety of sources being allocated to research in broadening participation in computing (BPC). Many of the BPC efforts are funded by the National…

A well-run introductory CS1 course is essential for all students within CS education. CS1 is necessary to keep students in the major and important to attract non-majors to the CS field. Unfortunately, there are many well-known issues that most CS1 courses have in common: high drop rates, low retention, high student stress, student struggle,…

This qualitative research used the tenants of phenomenological research to structure a study that begins to identify faculty coordinator's decision processes in selecting a general education mathematics course. In this study, I examined the question if a faculty member's experiences or beliefs had any influence on the decision process. The…

The problem that was addressed in this study was underrepresented minorities' low interest in pursuing computer science as a profession. The purpose of this quantitative, quasi-experimental study was to measure underrepresented youth's attitudes toward computer science. The issue remains a pressing challenge in the U.S. This study explored the…

Despite efforts to increase representation among those enrolled, earning degrees, and working in the computing and technology industry, women across races/ethnicities and People of Color more broadly remain underrepresented in the field. Fortunately, extant literature has found that psychosocial factors like computing identity can help broaden…

Nationally, a shortage exists of qualified cybersecurity persons entering the field, posing challenges for higher education institutions in locating qualified educators to help fill the gap. A wealth of literature discusses the needs of students, yet literature outlining qualities of attracting graduates to become educators is lacking. The purpose…

Teenagers today are coming of age under unprecedented, pervasive networks of institutional mass surveillance technologies. Surveillance technologies spreading in youth spaces are impacting young people's prospects today and are expected to continue in the future. Additionally, today's teenagers will be tomorrow's decision-makers, tasked with…

This dissertation presents a novel theory of event memory along with an associated computational model that embodies the claims of view which is integrated within a cognitive architecture. Event memory is a general-purpose storage for personal past experience. Literature on event memory reveals that people can remember events by both the…

The rise in children's media use (Rideout & Robb, 2020) and the prioritization of STEM learning (Fayer et al., 2017) has led to the development of new STEM-related apps, TV shows, and other media for young children. One topic in this area gaining popularity is computational thinking (CT). Researchers refer to CT as an approach to problem…

This dissertation investigates the issue of gender stratification within engineering and other STEM-related fields. The dissertation is divided into three articles that address different aspects of the problem and propose potential solutions. Article 1 explores the persistent gender imbalance within STEM fields, particularly in engineering and…