Integrating Computer Science into Preservice Special Education Coursework: Exploring Faculty Perspectives and Practices

Overview & Synopsis

Despite a growing national focus on computer science (CS) education, students with disabilities are often excluded from or not able to access high quality CS experiences and coursework. One reason for this is a lack of teachers who support students with disabilities and also hold CS knowledge and skills. Integrating CS into preservice teacher special education pathways is one way to begin to address this issue so that newly credentialed teachers also have foundational CS knowledge. To explore this possibility, the authors conducted an exploratory case study to better understand what CS activities and content three special education faculty members integrated and why they chose to do this work. Data sources included faculty interviews, CS integration artifacts, and course revision proposals. Thematic analysis was used to uncover emergent themes. The authors found that faculty members were successful in integrating foundational CS knowledge and skills into their coursework, and their primary rationale for doing this work was to address existing inequities experienced by students with disabilities. More work is needed to better understand how special education faculty members could integrate more advanced CS topics, as well as how faculty members outside of special education pathways could begin to integrate CS into other preservice coursework.