Ziva R Hassenfeld

This chapter discusses understandings of coding and computational thinking education for students with disabilities. The chapter describes the special education system in the United States, including limitations in how computer science education is made available to students receiving special education services. The chapter then provides a summary of research in computer science education for students with disabilities, including both high-incidence and low-incidence disabilities. A case study of a young student with a mild disability learning in a general education computational thinking program is then presented, and the implications of the case study for future research directions are discussed.

The chapter begins with an exploration of computational thinking (CT) and its relationship to computational literacy, followed by a summary of theoretical and empirical work that aims to elucidate the connections among coding, CT, and literacy. The authors argue that these connections thus far have been predominantly one of support (i.e., unidirectional) and motivated by technological and policy advances, as opposed to considering the connections as mutually reinforcing and developmentally coaligned. The authors discuss the coding as another language (CAL) pedagogical approach, a pedagogy that presents learning to program as akin to learning how to use a new language for communicative and expressive functions, emphasizing the bidirectional connections between the two domains. Finally, the authors detail various curricula that use the CAL approach and discuss the implications of CAL for teaching and learning in early childhood.