Using Improvement Science Methodology as an Approach to Providing CS Educational Coaching

While professional development is essential to building the capacity of educators, asynchronous coaching support is critical to growing as a CS professional. Our coaching goal is to address equity and inclusion during the school year through one-on-one meetings. In addition, we seek to contribute to the field of CS education by studying new educational coaching systems and practices of change. We share a process for engaging educators in online computer science(CS) educational coaching via improvement science methodology. The purpose of the online CS coaching sessions centers around three questions: 1) What specifically are we trying to accomplish with CS activities?; 2) What change(s) might we introduce to the school and/or classroom and why? and; 3) How will we know that these changes are actually an improvement to promoting equitable CS practices? The first two questions help us identify the challenges and take a systems perspective approach, while the third question encourages an empirical orientation in order to question our own ideas, biases, and challenge what we believe is true in CS education. We share our findings in implementing plan-do-study-act cycles (PDSA) cycles as an inquiry based approach. While our goal for each PDSA cycle is to identify inclusive instructional strategies and provide additional support to struggling students, each iteration provides us with the opportunity to better understand student performance and participation inside a CS classroom. We present our PDSA cycles template and samples of goal planning for new CS classroom activities, student surveys and assessments, as well as our study of findings and data with actions for moving forward.