Millions of talented individuals, including many from rural areas, are missing from the Computer Science (CS) workforce, in part due to a lack of access to CS education opportunities. Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) have emerged as a valuable conduit for bridging the CS and related STEM careers informational gap and expanding students’ interest and knowledge of CS and STEM careers (Brown & Allen, 2021; Coburn & Penuel, 2016; Farrell, Harrison, & Coburn, 2019; Hirsch et al., 2018; Henrick, Munoz, & Cobb, 2016; Hunzicker et al., 2015; Penuel et al., 2020; Sjölund, 2023; Tseng & Nutley, 2014). One such RPP is the Secure and Upgrade Computer Science in Classrooms through an Ecosystem with Scalability & Sustainability (SUCCESS) Research-Practice Partnership, which we developed in 2021 to help create CS opportunities in rural Raleigh County in West Virginia (WV). Since then, SUCCESS has provided high-quality CS education and counseling to over 5,960 middle school students across five middle schools in the Raleigh County School District. 

In this article, we share our RPP’s journey of recognizing and leveraging the role of one particular group of partners in the RPP: middle school counselors. Middle school counselors support engagement in CS classes and provide information about CS careers to students and their families, which is critical to broadening participation in CS (Denner et al., 2023; Green & Denner, 2021; NSF Strategic Plan, 2022; Savitz-Romer et al., 2018). Our local counselors have been essential in our efforts as an RPP. However, our biggest challenge in the first year of the RPP was overcoming our misconceptions about the role of middle school counselors, particularly at the school and district levels. We offer this account with the hope that 1) it can contribute to the larger conversation about the kinds of struggles RPPs may often face in their early years when it comes to understanding the role and expertise different partners contribute and how to work through these struggles, and 2) it can be particularly helpful to other rural middle school districts interested in increasing their capacity to provide similar opportunities for their students. Let’s dive in!

BARRIERS TO QUALITY CS EDUCATION IN RURAL AREAS

To help set the stage, we begin with a brief description of the rural context and why quality CS education is less common in this setting. Schools in rural communities throughout the country are eager to offer highly engaging CS learning experiences, as many jobs require CS skills (Kermish-Allen et al., 2020). In addition, states are implementing new standards that integrate CS standards with career content. However, rural K-12 schools are less likely to offer CS educational opportunities than their suburban and city counterparts, in part because their populations often have low income and thus, schools have limited budgets (Kermish-Allen et al., 2020; School Superintendents Trust, 2017). These budget limitations can result in outdated technology and inadequate infrastructure. Additionally, skilled CS teachers are in high demand, often lured to urban and suburban areas with more lucrative opportunities (Google & Gallup, 2017; Warner et al., 2019). Finally, the geographical isolation of rural communities frequently means that they lack access to nearby universities and tech companies that serve as valuable resources and partners and that parents and educators often are less aware of CS demand and opportunities (Google & Gallup, 2017).

THE WEST VIRGINIA CONTEXT

Zeroing in on our state, we see that while 86% of West Virginia’s population completes 12th grade, only 21% complete an undergraduate degree, and the percentage of the state’s population living below the poverty level is among the highest in the nation at 15.8% (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2021). Graduating high school with coding skills would increase the number of WV graduates who obtain well-paying jobs immediately post-graduation and also increase the skill sets of high school graduates who go on to attend vocational school or college. This would change the socioeconomic outlook for many who believe their only career opportunities are in the coal industry (Parke, 2017). Currently, there are 561 computing jobs open in the state—1.8 times more than other states—with an average pay rate of $83,600, but these are out of reach for most (Code.org State Facts, n.d.). Thus, providing CS support to K-12 schools has potentially far-reaching effects for students, teachers, and the state’s economy (Goh & Kale, 2015).

The West Virginia Department of Education (WVDE) created a plan to make CS available to all WV students. One outcome has been the mandated WV College and Career Readiness Standards for Student Success formed around 16 career clusters, all of which require various levels of CS knowledge (WVDE CCR, n.d.). These standards require that a Personalized Education Plan (PEP) be developed collaboratively with all 8th-grade students, their parents/guardians, and school counselors to allow students to realize aspirations related to the career cluster(s) of interest to them. Based on these career aspirations, each student’s PEP identifies course selections for 9th and 10th grades (WVDE, 2023). 

Approximately 1,133 teachers statewide had already completed CS Professional Development (PD) offered by Code.org in the few years preceding the SUCCESS RPP, and SUCCESS partner Raleigh County School District in rural southern WV had offered some CS opportunities at one of its five middle schools (ZoomWV Data, 2021-24). However, very low high school CS enrollments in the few schools that offered CS, even in Raleigh County, indicated that just providing PD and then making CS available was not effective in increasing enrollment in CS courses. Other factors needed to be addressed as well; for example, there was little administrative support for CS beyond teacher PD. Additionally, there was no time allotted in the schedule for CS instruction, nor were classrooms equipped with appropriate technology. CS also was not adequately addressed in the student advising process. SUCCESS was therefore based on the premise that providing appropriate high-quality PD, counselor training, and curricula tailored to local needs by and for teachers, counselors, and principals along with appropriate support would increase student enrollment in CS (NCWIT, n.d.a; Zaza et al., 2019).

THE SUCCESS RPP

SUCCESS RPP partners include Raleigh County School District (RCSD), with teachers, counselors, and principals participating; West Virginia University (WVU) Center for Excellence in STEM Education; West Virginia Department of Education (WVDE); and Code.org. Since 2021, participating teachers have worked together to adapt, co-develop, and implement lesson plans with pacing guides for the CS curriculum. They also have developed accompanying PD materials for other teachers that are particularly relevant for rural schools. At the first 2021 workshop, counselors received Counselors for Computing (C4C) training from the National Center of Women and Information Technology (NCWIT), including presentations on how to use NCWIT materials to promote CS education to students and parents (NCWIT, n.d.a., b.). Project goals supported by short- and long-term implementation strategies also were developed and roles were defined for the diverse group of SUCCESS partners. For example, we developed three major strategies to establish connections between the Code.org curriculum and WVDE’s 16 career clusters at RCSD’s five middle schools: 1) Teachers would incorporate locally relevant materials into the Code.org curriculum; 2) The team would create short videos featuring local professionals using CS in their work, with explicit links to WVDE’s 16 career clusters; and 3) Teachers and counselors would map each Code.org unit onto WVDE 16 career clusters. Despite these activities, our biggest challenges encountered in the first year involved misunderstanding and underutilizing the role of middle school counselors; these challenges, and the solutions we developed, are discussed below.

Raleigh County School District students practice their CS skills.

MIDDLE SCHOOL COUNSELORS: A CRITICAL COLLABORATOR IN THE RPP

Here’s the knowledge that would have helped us tremendously in our first year: the significance of school counselors in making it possible to increase both the availability and quality of CS education in schools. Specifically, counselors coordinate with administration to provide time in the schedule for CS and physical space in the school for providing instruction. In addition, they are the most direct connection to students and their families when it comes to providing CS career information and encouraging student engagement in CS. Counselors also play a crucial role in providing the broader community with CS course and local career information. This is important because parents may not be aware that CS careers often will allow their kids to obtain well-paying jobs in WV, remaining close to home—a frequent concern for rural parents as well as students (Google & Gallup, 2017).

OUR RPP’s JOURNEY TOWARDS UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE OF MIDDLE SCHOOL COUNSELORS

An understanding of the role of counselors–and thus effective leveraging of their work–came later in our journey as a partnership. In SUCCESS’s first year, despite defining roles at the first annual workshop, the university partners did not effectively make use of counselors’ expertise, primarily due to misconceptions about our counselors’ roles in the district formed prior to the formalization of the RPP and failure to clarify those misconceptions in the first year. Specifically, prior to formalization of the RPP, university partners’ conception of ‘what counselors do’ was formed primarily based on a review of the relevant literature. Furthermore, university partners never surveyed WV counselors as we had done with WV teachers prior to the RPP formalization, primarily due to lack of opportunity, as surveys were conducted at teacher PD events. While we stressed from day one that every RPP member was needed to contribute their unique expertise to the partnership, neither university partners nor counselors were aware that these misconceptions were holding us back. 

University partners were aware that using data-driven practices to inform student CS course selection could empower counselors to provide tailored guidance, identify areas of improvement, and promote CS education for all students. We also knew that counselors could enhance their data literacy skills and ensure that their counseling practices align with students’ interests and aspirations. However, over the course of our first year, SUCCESS RPP counselors helped university partners recognize that the development of these and similar effective strategies to promote CS education required greater knowledge of their purpose in the school and the district. As the first year progressed, university partners learned from RPP surveys and meeting notes that school counselors not only advise students, but also have many additional responsibilities. University partners realized that we needed more information about our RPP counselors’ roles and responsibilities if we wanted to broaden participation of WV students in CS not only in our RPP, but in other schools as well.  At the second annual SUCCESS workshop, our evaluator suggested that counselors and teachers collaborate to write a list of all the counselor roles and responsibilities. This activity provided more complete information to all team members about not just counselors’ responsibilities, but also the interactions between counselors, teachers, administrators, students, their parents, and the broader community (see Table 1). The partnership now uses this information to make better use of RPP counselors’ expertise in several areas, including collection and interpretation of student CS interest data, parent and community involvement in CS activities, and course requirements and class space/scheduling. Particularly important for RPP university partners was learning about counselors’ roles in scheduling class time and space as we realized that insufficient time and space was part of the reason that few schools had offered high-quality CS prior to SUCCESS, even though hundreds of WV’s K-12 teachers had completed Code.org’s PD.

Table 1. Results from Counselor Responsibilities and Roles Activity

Additional understanding about the kinds of insights counselors brought to the RPP came at the end of our first year, when we compared the number of students enrolling in CS and STEM majors in district high schools before and after SUCCESS was implemented, assuming that the number would increase as a result of SUCCESS. However, at the end of SUCCESS’ first year, we found little change in student enrollment in STEM majors. This was confusing, given the other data we had collected. We discussed this issue at the second workshop and learned from counselors that some majors requiring courses categorized by the National Science Foundation as STEM are not categorized as STEM in RCSD, including the Biological Sciences major. When the school counselors that formed part of our RPP provided us with the definition of the courses in which students had enrolled, we found that there were increases in STEM major enrollment. Thus our new shared understanding of the role of school counselors has allowed us to leverage their expertise in previously unexpected ways, discussed in more detail below.

OTHER CHALLENGES AND THEIR SOLUTIONS IN THE FIRST YEAR OF OUR RPP

Unfortunately, it was not possible to collect course enrollment data for all students, so the RPP needed to find a better way to determine what impact, if any, SUCCESS had on STEM enrollment (at the high school level) or career interest for all grades. Teachers and counselors agreed that one method might be asking students to self-report all the STEM careers that interested them as part of a survey we already were administering to students at the end of every semester. Together, we agreed that this was the best solution, creating a long list of CS and STEM careers based on previously published surveys and lists. Teachers and counselors also determined that students should be allowed to select as many careers as they wanted, and even write in additional careers, as this would give us more detailed information about not only the types of careers that they were interested in but also how many. We added this item to the survey in SUCCESS’ second year. The results were very promising, with most students selecting multiple STEM careers, and we shared those results with the West Virginia Department of Education and Code.org. In addition, the STEM Career Interest Survey (Kier et al., 2014) is now being administered to students, resulting in more than 1500 student responses that have been used by counselors to help students create their PEPs, while also supporting the refinement of data collection methods used by the RPP team.

The RPP had also originally proposed to create a library of 48 videos mapped to the 16 career clusters: 3 for each career cluster. However, RCSD school lockdowns in Fall 2021 interrupted planned video production, necessitating a new strategy. At the first meeting of the year, we planned an activity to address this issue, and counselors suggested that local professionals could give career presentations at school career fairs, which could be recorded and made available on the SUCCESS website at each school in a hybrid format. Counselors and teachers arranged for local professionals to give presentations at each of RCSD’s 5 middle schools. Some schools held in-person fairs while others had virtual events; hybrid events continue to be offered as they allow parents and caregivers to attend, in addition to their students. Local professionals talk about their hometown in WV, using CS in their jobs, CS courses and other training needed, and their career paths. Their presentations are followed by question-and-answer sessions for the audience. Presentations are recorded and made available on the CS for All website. In 2023, participating counselors invited STEM professionals who recently had graduated from RCSD, helping students and their parents understand how local students had prepared for well-paying careers in the state. The middle school students and their parents learned about available STEM careers and salaries, a typical day on the job, and necessary CS knowledge and skills. Pre-post student/parent survey responses indicated that career fairs have been well-received and that understanding of CS careers has increased, including knowledge of salary expectations (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. CS Salary Expectations as Reported by SUCCESS Career Fair Participants (n = 105 students/parents)

OTHER LESSONS LEARNED

An effective RPP requires a significant time investment upfront to develop relationships, define roles, align goals, and build collaborative capacity between partners. This preliminary work ensures that interventions focus on increasing access while considering the systemic barriers and issues, thereby fostering more sustainable and inclusive solutions. Once launched, frequent communication is essential to the development and dissemination of evidence-based practices, ultimately leading to positive outcomes for educators, students, and communities (Wargo et al., 2021). We learned that discussions among SUCCESS university partners and school counselors improved our ability to accurately assess changes in students’ interest in STEM careers that occurred as a result of their CS experiences. School counselors now play a vital role in the collection of accurate data to determine which students are interested in CS and STEM courses and careers (Henrick et al., 2017; Lefever-Davis, Johnson, & Pearman, 2007).

Increasing access to CS education in rural districts requires buy-in from administrators, counselors, and teachers. Allocation of resources at the state and district levels  is critical for adding/updating technology and infrastructure, as is providing professional development to increase the CS teacher workforce, and offering counselor training to increase knowledge about CS careers. These issues can present challenges of scalability and sustainability (Warner et al., 2019). For us, our RPP formalized existing collaborative partnerships and thus we already had buy-in at the start of the RPP, which was tremendously helpful. We were then able as a partnership to help provide the resources needed for PD and other needs.

The long-term collaborations between practitioners and researchers afforded by RPPs are effective in leveraging the unique perspectives, experiences, and expertise that each partner contributes to the collaborative process. These authentic discussions ensure that interventions and practices are relevant, effective, and tailored to local needs, context, and limitations. We feel that for us, the collaborative conversations that led to the realization that we needed to better leverage school counselors’ knowledge, skills, and abilities would not have been possible if not for the RPP context with its values of long-term collaboration and explicit attention paid to relationship-building.

OUR RPP’S IMPACT THUS FAR

We are excited about the impact our RPP has been able to make to date and look forward to our future as a partnership. In our first three years as a partnership (2021-22 to 2023-24), a total of 31 teachers, 16 counselors, 5 IT staff, and 16 principals participated in creating SUCCESS CS classes. In this timeframe, a total of 5,755 students were enrolled in these classes (an average of 78% of students enrolled in RCSD middle schools). As we shared throughout this article, our biggest takeaway from year 1 of the partnership was that explicitly identifying and celebrating the strengths and roles of every individual within the RPP and providing opportunities to grow each individual’s capacity to enact this role helps the partnership make greater and more efficient progress toward project goals.

We hope other partnerships might find it useful to learn from our experiences, in particular when it comes to leveraging the role of middle school counselors but also the roles of other participants in the partnership that may not be fully understood and supported – maybe it is your own role that you want to have explored further within your RPP context! Within our own partnership, we look forward to continued transparency and critical examinations of our roles and goals as we continue our work – together. 

Acknowledgement: This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2031355.

Lynnette Michaluk is a social sciences researcher and evaluator in the WVU Center for Excellence in STEM Education; she’s been working in STEM Education research and evaluation since 2010. Rachel Pauley is the Raleigh County West Virginia School District Director of Technology, is a leader in bringing CS education to West Virginia’s students and integrating technology into their classrooms, and is also the CSTA District Representative. Nazim Mustafa is a research associate currently at West Virginia One Health. Gay Stewart is an Eberly Professor of STEM Education in the West Virginia University Department of Physics and Astronomy and is director of the WVU Center for Excellence in STEM Education. Danny Schmidt is a Senior Research Analyst at Partner to Improve, an education evaluation, research, and consulting group. Susan Ganter recently joined the West Virginia University Center for Excellence in STEM Education as Senior Associate Director. She has served in numerous university leadership roles including as Provost and Dean, and has studied the connections between mathematics and many other disciplines to improve student success in STEM. Mingyu Lu, Professor, West Virginia University Institute of Technology Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, supervises WVU IT undergraduates placed in SUCCESS classrooms to support SUCCESS teachers. His other research interests include wireless power transmission, radar systems, microwave remote sensing, antenna design, and computational electromagnetics.  

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Suggested citation: Michaluk, L., Pauley, R., Mustafa, N., Stewart, G.,  Schmidt, D., Ganter, S., & Lu, M. (2024). Understanding the Crucial Role of Middle School Counselors in Providing Computer Science Opportunities to Rural Students: A Research-Practice Partnership’s Journey Toward Leveraging the Expertise of RPP Team Members. NNERPP Extra, 7(1), pp 12-24. https://doi.org/10.25613/0PVF-G783