We’re curating a list of resources for critical CS pedagogy below. Do you have a resource you’d like to add? Send them to Amy for inclusion!

Practice Briefs

We’ve been developing short 2-page practice briefs that help teachers and school leaders understand opportunities for teaching CS in more critically conscious ways:

• How to Teach Computer Science as Both a Technical and Social Subject offers opportunities for linking CS to topics in social sciences.

• Talking about Artificial Intelligence explains basic concepts in AI and equity, identifying ways to address these concepts in classrooms.

The Mozilla Foundation has also compiled several short practice briefs:

• Teaching Responsible Computing Playbook, covers accessibility, ethics, broadening participation, employment choices, difficult conversations, managing resistance, unintended consequences, and more.

Fiction

Below are novels and novellas suitable for middle and high school youth:

• Our Reality (by Tadayoshi Kohno) is a novella set in 2024 that explores questions of race, surveillance, and augmented reality. It’s a great option for middle or high school classrooms that want to examine the intersections of technology, ethics, policy, and race.

• Power Up! (by Jean J. Ryoo, Jane Margolis, and Charis JB), is a graphic novel about students taking a stand against how computing is used in their schools.

Collections

Below are other collections of resources, like this one.

• Computers and Society. This website, organized by several scholars of computing, ethics, and society, organizes resources for learning and thinking ethically about computing.

• REAL-CS Student Voices. This project contains videos, books, and other materials on marginalization in K-12 CS, and including a video that amplifies student voices in CS.

• Algorithms and Society YouTube Channel. This collection of videos discuss issues at the intersection of algorithms and social issues.

Units, Lessons, and Modules

• Ethical Reflection Modules for CS 1. This collection by Evan Peck at Bucknell University has several activities that integrate critical consciousness into introductory programming courses.

• Tech Ethics Syllabi. This collection of course syllabi details the many ways that faculty are teaching ethics in the context of CS education.

• Humanities CS1. A collection of assignments, readings, and discussions for a course on programming, science and technology studies, and social justice.

• Cultural Analytics. An online textbook that teachers Python at the intersection of humanities and social sciences.

• Microsoft’s Data Science for Beginners. This curriculum covers some aspects of algorithmic bias.

• Microsoft’s Machine Learning for Beginners. This curriculum covers some aspects of data and classification bias.

Communities

• Algorithmic Justice League. Raises awareness about the impacts of AI and organizes to enable an AI ecosystem toward equitable and accountable AI.

• Design Justice. Organizers designers who want to use design to sustain, heal, and empower communities, rather than exploit and oppress.