ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE, pronounced “tose”) publishes high quality, peer-reviewed research articles on all aspects of computing education of interest to computing education researchers, computing educators, instructional designers, school teachers, institution administrators, policy makers, and other stakeholders.

The topics covered by TOCE span all aspects of computing education at the individual, group, community, organizational, systems, and policy levels:

    Any age, from young children to the elderly;
    Any learning or teaching context, including primary, secondary, post-secondary, professional, and informal learning;
    Any content area of computing, from classic areas of CS, to historical foundations of computer science, computing and society, human-computer interaction and design, computer engineering, software engineering, information systems, information technology, informatics, data science, and integrations between computing and other computing-adjacent disciplines;
    Any aspect of computing education, including but not limited to: teaching, learning, literacy, identity, culture, community, policy, diversity, ethics, equity, inclusion, justice, reform, and advocacy;
    Any type of research contribution that advances learning and/or teaching about computing, including, but not limited to: novel empirical studies, theories, arguments, research methods, educational technologies, teaching methods, tools, curricula, and policies;
    Any epistemology, including but not limited to: positivist, post-positivist, as well as interpretivist, and critical theory;
    Any method, including but not limited to: quantitative methods, qualitative methods, design methods, historical methods, mixed methods of any combination, and novel arguments.

While the scope of TOCE is broad, there are some things the journal does not publish:

    The journal does not publish experience reports. To count as research, submissions are expected to 1) pose one or more research questions; 2) be thoroughly grounded in prior research literature; 3) articulate methods, approaches, and rationale for answering the questions; and 4) discuss implications for research.
        Note: the journal has very broad, epistemologically plural notion of research: all methods — quantitative, qualitative, argumentative, design, empirical, non-empirical, large samples, single cases, analyses and syntheses of prior research, and more — are considered research, as long as they have these required elements. Any paper that uses research methods, but does not pose a question, is not grounded in prior research literature, or does not discuss implications for research, will not be considered a research submission.
        Note: Research questions do not necessarily be labeled as research questions; it just needs to be evident what the question is, so we can assess what is being asked or investigated and how it relates to prior work.
    The journal does not publish on learning technologies, unless the technology is specifically about teaching and/or learning computing concepts, and reveals insights about teaching/and or learning computing. It is not enough for learners to be using computers to learn, or for learning to be set in a learning context about computing concepts. The work must reveal insights about teaching and/or learning computing in particular to be in scope.
    The journal publishes manuscripts about integrations between computing and other disciplines, but only if the submission reveals insights about the teaching and/or learning of computing. It is up to authors to make explicit how the paper concerns the teaching and/or learning of computing and what the submission discovers about this teaching or learning. For example, we welcome and encourage submissions about integrations in mathematics, science, social studies, language arts, the arts, and more, but submissions must teach us about teaching and/or learning computing in those contexts in some way, rather than strictly be about teaching and/or learning in those other subject areas.

If you're unsure whether your submission fits the scope above, the Editor-in-Chief is happy to provide guidance before you submit.