Intent and Extent: Computer Science Concepts and Practices in Integrated Computing

Integrated computing curricula combine learning objectives in computing with those in another discipline, like literacy, math, or science, to give all students experience with computing, typically before they must decide whether to take standalone CS courses. One goal of integrated computing curricula is to provide an accessible path to an introductory computing course by introducing computing concepts and practices in required courses. This study analyzed integrated computing curricula to determine which CS practices and concepts are taught, how extensively the curricula are taught, and, by extension, how they might prepare students for later computing courses. The authors conducted a content analysis to examine primary and lower secondary (i.e., K-8) curricula that are taught in non-CS classrooms, have explicit CS learning objectives (i.e., CS+X), and that took 5+ hours to complete. Lesson plans, descriptions, and resources were scored based on frameworks developed from the K-12 CS Framework, including programming concepts, non-programming CS concepts, and CS practices. The results found that curricula most extensively taught introductory concepts and practices, such as sequences, and rarely taught more advanced content, such as conditionals. Students who engage with most of these curricula would have no experience working with fundamental concepts, like variables, operators, data collection or storage, or abstraction in the context of a program. While this focus might be appropriate for integrated curricula, it has implications for the prior knowledge that students should be expected to have when starting standalone computing courses.