Comparing Research Foci (What) and Student Participation (Who) in Computing Education Research in the United Kingdom and United States

BACKGROUND. This full research paper focuses on understanding research foci (what) and student participants (who) in primary and secondary (K-12) computer science (CS) education research (CER). With the growing interest in CS education at primary and secondary schools, there is a growing body of research. Unfortunately, there is limited analysis of research against the broader education ecosystem. Given the significant contributions in CER in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, a comparative analysis of research between the two regions can identify strengths and opportunities for each. RESEARCH QUESTIONS. Our research questions for this study were: When comparing using the CAPE framework, what similarities and differences across areas of study exist among research studies with student participants from the UK and the U.S. ?and What similarities and differences exist in reporting of participant demographics between studies with student participants from the UK and the U.S.? METHODOLOGY. We conducted a systematic mapping review of K-12 CS education research publications (2019–2022). We used the Capacity, Access, Participation, and Experience (CAPE) framework to group publications that studies similar topic areas. We then ran descriptive statistics (counts and percentages across number of codes and also number of publications) to identify commonalities and differences between the regions with respect to areas of focus and student participant demographics, FINDINGS AND IMPLICATIONS. Our results suggest that dominant-norming likely exists in our corpus of CER that needs mitigating. Studies with UK participants reported prior experi-ence and gender of participants significantly more, while those in the US were twice as likely to report participant race/ethnicity significantly more. Research focused on pedagogy, the topics of student engagement, and content knowledge were studied more frequently than other areas in both regions. There is limited research related to funding for computing education, school-based extracurricular activities, and social-familial influences, all of which are critical for understanding their impacts on students.