Designing a K-16 Cybersecurity Collaborative: CIPHER

In this article, researchers hare initial findings from the testing of a proposed framework to address the challenges in establishing a K–16 pipeline to prepare cybersecurity professionals. The goal of the initiative is to create a researcher– practitioner partnership (RPP) that paves the way for a national alliance for the development of fundamental, theoretically grounded, and systematic approaches to inclusive K–16 cybersecurity education, especially for students who have a low socio-economic status (SES). The Cybersecurity Inclusive Pathways Toward Higher Education and Research (CIPHER) model brings together scholars from multiple disciplines and practitioners from various fields to collaborate and understand the problems and to co-construct a K–16 partnership model to address those challenges. The planning phase is designed to substantially shape the development of CIPHER. This process, using a design-based implementation research (DBIR) approach, enables researchers to iteratively test ideas with stakeholders, engage with partners to co-design and test evolutions of CIPHER, and develop a model that can be implemented and scaled up with fidelity.