Integrating Computational Thinking in Rural Middle School Art Classes in Eastern North Carolina

R. Martin Reardon

doi:10.3776/tpre.2022.v12n2p71-87

Authors

R. Martin Reardon East Carolina University https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9842-9742

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3776/tpre.2022.v12n2p71-87

Keywords:

computational thinking, music, visual arts, rural, middle schools

Abstract

With funding from a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, an innovative endeavor to integrate computational thinking into the teaching of both music and visual arts in three rural school districts in North Carolina was launched in early December 2018. Over the next five years—a time span that encompassed a major hurricane which devastated the area and the COVID-19 pandemic—the partners in a research practitioner partnership collaborated to create and refine curricular activity system projects in both subject areas. This paper is focused on the visual arts component of the grant activities. After discussing the genesis of the project, I situate it as contributing to the cultural capital of the middle school student participants and situate it theoretically in cognitive flexibility theory. I then discuss the operational definition of computational thinking that underpinned the design of the elements of the curricular activity system which were then refined and adapted to the rural contexts in collaboration with the teachers. I provide an overview of the curricular activities (a professional development website was created by grant colleagues at University 2) and discuss students’ perspectives on the concepts and approaches of computational thinking. I close with reflections on the importance of the project.

Author Biography

R. Martin Reardon, East Carolina University

R. Martin Reardon, PhD, is an associate professor in the Educational Leadership Department of the College of Education at East Carolina University (ECU). Reardon joined the department in 2014 and accepted an invitation in 2017 to also join colleagues as an affiliate faculty member of the ECU Rural Education Institute (REI). Within the department, Reardon teaches a range of courses in the Educational Doctorate program focused on the design and implementation of problem-of-practice dissertations utilizing quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods approaches. He earned his PhD in Educational Policy, Planning, and Leadership from The College of William and Mary in Virginia in 2000. After graduation, Reardon was on the faculty at Marian University (Wisconsin) for 4 years and was the inaugural Chair of the Educational Studies Department there before joining Virginia Commonwealth University and then ECU. Prior to his career in higher education, Reardon held a wide range of teaching and administrative positions in two states over the course of his 27-year career at the high school level in Australia.

Reardon’s recent publications have focused on school/university/community collaboration as a context for change and he has edited/co-edited ten book volumes addressing this topic. He was the executive Co-PI on a recently completed $1 million National Science Foundation grant to integrate computational thinking with the teaching of music and visual arts in three rural eastern North Carolina school districts. With colleagues in REI, he has engaged in the conduct of mixed methods research into the social emotional welfare of elementary students and is currently collaborating in the conduct of a research project inquiring into learning recovery in the COVID-19 context.

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Integrating Computational Thinking in Rural Middle School Art Classes in Eastern North Carolina

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Author Biography

R. Martin Reardon, East Carolina University

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