Too often, CS education teaches only the technical. In this book, we reimagine the technical in social terms, teaching both CS content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge that teachers need to help youth understand how computing is shaping society, often in harmful ways.
Thank you to my wonderful coauthors, @beitlers, Brett Wortzman, Matt Davidson, @Alannnah, @mara__kr, and @Stefania_druga, to everyone who gave early feedback, and to @NSF for funding the work.
We hope you find time to read it, and send us feedback! The book is on GitHub, so feel free to submit issues or pull requests on anything you think might be improved: github.com/amyjko/critica…
Ah, and I forgot to also thank the wonderful Jessie Hyunh and Ashley Wang for their outstanding visual design work on the book! The book design and the images throughout the book are all thanks to them.
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1. A new theory of PL knowledge.
It’s the first theory that accounts for how people use causal inference to build mapping of syntax to semantics, and can help predict and explain difficulties in learning to code.
2. The design of a PL tutor. This tool is so exciting! By offering an interactive way of rapidly building syntax/semantics causal inference mappings, students can robustly learn to trace programs in a PL in hours.
For those who need a summary of the history behind the Harper’s letter calling for good faith debate, here’s a thread, presented in the form of a middle school conflict at recess. 1/N
Amy: Hi, I’m Amy. I’m trans.
Todd: Ug, gross, you’re an it, go away.
Amy: But... I’m not an it.
Todd: Yes you are.
Amy: No... I’m Amy, I’m a person.
Todd: I don’t think so. That’s just my opinion.
Amy: I don’t want to talk to you anymore.
Todd: [chases after Amy]
Todd: What, you think I’m wrong?
Amy: You are wrong. I’m a person.
Todd: Too scared to debate me?
Amy: No, I just think you’re being mean.
Todd: [Calls over his friends]
Todd: This it won’t talk to me.
Amy: Stop bothering me!
Todd: Should we make it talk to us?