Bridging Disciplines: Integrating Computer Science and Social Studies in Rural Middle Schools

Computer Science (CS) education is becoming increasingly important in K-12 schooling, with some U.S. states now requiring educators to integrate CS into various disciplinary courses. The CS for Social Studies project supports the integration of CS into Social Studies (SS) classes in rural middle schools. Twenty-five teachers, working mostly in pairs (one SS teacher and one CS or instructional technology teacher), participated in professional learning workshops and received coaching support to design and implement integrated lessons that address both SS and CS learning standards. The current analysis examines the corpus of year-end, project-based integrated CS-SS lessons (n=8), to illuminate how integrated CS-SS lessons can address learning goals across both disciplines. Data sources included teacher-created lesson materials, classroom observations/video, implementation logs, teacher interviews, and student work. Utilizing a framework created to characterize integrated CS-SS lessons, analysis of lessons (as designed and enacted) focuses on three dimensions: (1) depth of CS concepts, (2) integration of CS-SS, and (3) alignment of instructional tools/resources with integration objectives. All lessons addressed standards-aligned CS concepts such as variables, conditionals, branching, and computational thinking skills (e.g., decomposition), and a variety of SS topics including the Civil War, the Great Migration, and personal finance. However, lessons varied in the extent to which they leveraged students' CS knowledge to explicitly enhance SS learning (or vice versa). This analysis suggests there are multiple approaches to using CS concepts to support disciplinary learning, including creating new learning experiences to explore SS content.