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About

Dr. Joy Barnes-Johnson is a leading scholar in STEM education, whose research bridges the critical gap between teacher preparation, culturally responsive pedagogy, and computational thinking (CT). Her work focuses on empowering educators and students from historically underrepresented communities, particularly in rural and urban settings, through hands-on engineering and computer science learning. Her most influential study, "Preparing Teachers to Engage Rural Students in Computational Thinking Through Robotics, Game Design, and Culturally Responsive Teaching" (130 citations), provides a foundational framework for examining how teacher beliefs—specifically culturally responsive teaching self-efficacy and outcome expectancy—directly impact the integration of CT in classrooms. Dr. Barnes-Johnson further demonstrates the transformative power of informal STEM environments in her mixed-methods work (49 citations), showing how robotics and game design can significantly boost self-efficacy and STEM attitudes among predominantly African-American students. Her research is not merely theoretical; it offers actionable insights for developing teachers’ engineering practices and computational thinking beliefs. By centering equity and cultural relevance, Dr. Barnes-Johnson’s contributions are reshaping how we prepare the next generation of STEM educators and learners.