Proposals will be funded in four “strands” that foster design, implementation at scale, and/or research. Researcher-practitioner partnerships (RPP) strands are:

• For the High School Strand, the focus is on preparing and supporting teachers to teach rigorous CS courses;
• For the PreK-8 Strand, the focus is on designing, developing, and piloting instructional materials that integrate CS and CT into preK-8 classrooms;
• For preK-12 or preK-14 Pathways Strand, the focus is on designing pathways that support school districts in developing policies and supports for incorporating CS and CT across all grades and potentially into introductory levels at community or four-year colleges and universities.

For the Research Strand, the focus is on building strategically instrumental, or "high leverage" knowledge about the learning and teaching of introductory computer science to support key CS and CT understandings and abilities for all students.

CT refers to the thought processes involved in formulating problems and their solutions in such a way that the solutions can be effectively carried out by an information-processing agent (usually a computer). CT activities do not require the presence of a computing tool, but involve the requisite reasoning needed to capitalize on the use of computational tools. 

CS, as used in this solicitation, includes CT but also the broad range of understandings, competencies, and skills needed to apply computation in the digital world. It includes topics of problem specification and representation; algorithm development; software design, programming, and debugging; the Internet and networking; big data; cybersecurity; and application across a wide range of disciplines, including the associated societal impact and ethical considerations. This solicitation focuses on CS and CT instruction, as distinct from the mere use of computers or the use of common computational tools such as word processors or video editing or presentation software. The ability to use such tools is often referred to as computational literacy. This solicitation supports education beyond computational literacy.

RPPs aim to strengthen the capacity of an organization to reliably produce valued CS and CT education outcomes for diverse groups of students, educated by different teachers in varied organizational contexts. The focus is on building efforts that can succeed when implemented at scale. These studies require the deep engagement of researchers and practitioners during the collaborative research on problems of practice that are co-defined and of value to researchers and education agencies, such as a school district or community of schools. These types of projects seek to: 

• Study implementation in the local context;
• Employ rapid changes in implementation with short-cycle methods;
• Capitalize on variation in educational contexts to address the sources of variability in outcomes to understand what works, for whom, and under what conditions;
• Address organizational structures and processes and their relation to innovation;
• Employ measurement of change ideas, key drivers, and outcomes to continuously test working theories and to learn whether specific changes actually produce improvement; and
• Reform the system in which the approach is being implemented as opposed to overlaying a specific approach on an existing system.

For additional information about the RPP strands, see: https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2020/nsf20539/nsf20539.pdf#page=4

For additional information about the Research Strand, see: https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2020/nsf20539/nsf20539.pdf#page=5

• Others (see text field entitled "Additional Eligibility Criteria" for clarification)

Estimated Total Program Funding: