Teacher Perspectives on Leveraging Computer Science for Civic and Social Awareness

This study examines how high school computer science (CS) teachers engage with civic awareness and justice-oriented computing in their classrooms. Teachers participated in a professional development workshop designed to help them bridge political and technical boundaries in CS using a computing tool that visualized school segregation and redistricting. Following the workshop, they developed lesson plans that extended beyond the tool to explore broader connections between computing, race, and civic awareness. Through qualitative case analysis, the study explores how teachers (1) discussed the socio-political dimensions of computing, (2) addressed race and racism in computing contexts, and (3) integrated these ideas into CS lesson plans. Findings show that the workshop's use of explicit examples, such as redistricting and school segregation, paired with structured opportunities for reflection, helped teachers see how justice-oriented topics could meaningfully fit within CS instruction. Across cases, teachers recognized that technology is not neutral, connected computing concepts to civic and historical questions, and created lessons that invited students to reason, justify, and consider social impact.