Three Perspectives on the Pedagogy of Creative Work in High School Computer Programming

Opportunities to learn computer science (CS) in K-12 have greatly expanded in the last decade. Driving this expansion is the idea that to be engaged and productive citizens, it is not enough for students to use technology; they must experience technology as producers and creators. Learning computer programming is one way for students to engage in creativity, an important twenty-first century skill often hard to find in schools. As the opportunity to learn CS grows in schools, teachers, many of whom are new to CS themselves, find themselves leading students in creative work in computer programming. This dissertation presents three perspectives on the pedagogy of creative work in high school computer programming. As context, I focus on teachers of AP CS Principles, an Advanced Placement introductory CS course offered in high schools across the U.S. Importantly, the course frames CS as a creative field and includes as part of its AP assessment the Create Task, a portfolio task for which students submit a program of their own creation. Using in-depth qualitative interviews of 35 AP CS Principles teachers and additional classroom observation data, I present three descriptive papers examining the pedagogy of creative work as students learn to program. In the first paper, I use teachers’ definitions of creativity to examine how they make sense of creativity within the domain of computer programming. I find that teachers identify ways that students display both expressive and technical creativity, both of which teachers connect strongly to the teaching and learning of computer programming. In the second paper, I analyze teachers’ descriptions of creative tasks to examine different framings of creative work in the classroom. I identify six framings: replication, re-creation, application, incrementation, synthesis, and self-direction. Finally, in the third paper, I examine the instructional practices teachers use when engaging students in creative work. I find that teachers contrast their teaching with traditional ideas of schooling. They describe evolving pedagogical practices that highlight student ownership, that distribute expertise horizontally, and that attend to students’ affective experience as they build identities as creators in CS.