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Culturally responsive computing as brokerage: toward asset building with education-based social movements
Learning, Media and Technology
Abstract
Bridging schools and communities has been a goal, if not hurdle, for reformers who aim to improve the education of low-income and underrepresented students from the bottom-up. Strategies to create these connections are often characterized as ‘brokerage’, where individuals or organizations bridge two or more social worlds. This paper details the design and implementation of educational technologies that support the brokering of school–community connections using a ‘culturally responsive computing’ (CRC) framework. Culturally responsive education is often limited to content and learning styles, which misses the opportunities it creates for a brokerage process that also connects to education-based social movements for economic access in underrepresented communities. This paper provides empirical support for the claim that the CRC framework is well suited for both purposes. It allows schools and communities to build assets together, translating the knowledge and skills of underrepresented communities into math and computing education, while illuminating the ways in which technologies can motivate education-based social movement building.
... Concerns have been raised regarding the supposed neutrality and context-free nature of digital literacies, noting technology often reinforces dominant cultural norms (Axell 2020;Webb 2023). Incorporating diverse students' cultural knowledges can challenge prevailing norms and enhance student inclusion (Lachney 2017). Various researchers (Eglash et al. 2013;Scott, Kimberly, and Sheridan 2015) have begun advocating for culturally responsive computing (CRC). ...
... Implementation of CRC, however, requires transdisciplinary approaches to better create innovative curricula and supportive learning environments. A transdisciplinary methodology is cultural brokerage, which bridges three strategies: problem identification, advocacy, and connectivity (Lachney 2017). Problem identification can be employed to source local resources or to address community issues with technology; advocacy varies from subtle approaches -such as building trust between teachers and community -to direct political actions that empower teachers to advocate for community; connectivity connects schools with Indigenous communities. ...
... This article presented a unique case study that highlights how the arts can serve as a catalyst for integrating Lachney's (2017) categories of problem identification, advocacy, and connectivity into a cohesive lesson plan. This initiative involved collaboration with Indigenous Elders and Rangers to develop an innovative archaeological machine-learning application that catalogues rock art motifs and implement a culturally relevant digital curriculum. ...
... Goode & Margolis, 2011;Lachney, 2017;Madkins et al., 2020;Margolis & Goode, 2016;Scott et al., 2017;Seneviratne, 2017 Growth Mindset Students are given opportunities to make mistakes and fail, focus is on learning and growth over time. CS is not seen as an innate ability, but something everyone can learn. ...
... Master, et al., 2016 Culturally-Relevant and/or Responsive Content CS curriculum is tied to social justice efforts, and explicitly addresses and engages with longstanding racial, gender, and other inequities within the field. Madkins et al., 2020;Lachney, 2017;Scott et al., 2015;Vakil, 2018 2. Research suggests that meaningful, personalized, relevant curricula can impact women's decisions to pursue a career in CS (Goode & Margolis, 2011;Lachney, 2017;Madkins et al., 2020;Margolis & Goode, 2016;Scott et al., 2017;Seneviratne, 2017). Definitions for meaningful, relevant, and/or personalized curriculum are expansive, but in general, this type of learning experience connects with students' culture, community, interests, and/or needs. ...
... Master, et al., 2016 Culturally-Relevant and/or Responsive Content CS curriculum is tied to social justice efforts, and explicitly addresses and engages with longstanding racial, gender, and other inequities within the field. Madkins et al., 2020;Lachney, 2017;Scott et al., 2015;Vakil, 2018 2. Research suggests that meaningful, personalized, relevant curricula can impact women's decisions to pursue a career in CS (Goode & Margolis, 2011;Lachney, 2017;Madkins et al., 2020;Margolis & Goode, 2016;Scott et al., 2017;Seneviratne, 2017). Definitions for meaningful, relevant, and/or personalized curriculum are expansive, but in general, this type of learning experience connects with students' culture, community, interests, and/or needs. ...
A significant gender gap continues to exist within computer science (CS) education, despite a nationwide emphasis in the U.S. on increasing CS education equity and access. To explore this issue, we conducted an ethnographic case study within a classroom at Forest View High School (FVHS, pseudonym) where girls’ participation in CS was consistently higher than state averages over 12 years. We sought to understand teacher and student experiences within this gender-inclusive program. Data were collected over three months through observations, interviews, course documents, and reflections. Results indicate three strategies for supporting a more gender-inclusive classroom: (1) Providing personalized and relevant learning experiences; (2) modeling a growth mindset; and (3) creating a welcoming environment. Implications for practice include providing assignment choice, providing opportunities to learn from failure, and building personal relationships with students. Overall, teachers can act as agents of social change within the CS classroom, and play an essential, central role in broadening participation and equity initiatives. However, this work must also be supported by administrators, counselors, and other school stakeholders to be effective for enacting change.
... Collaborating with cultural experts can be a powerful way to foster deep connections between computing, culture, and community (Lachney, 2017a). What is more, there is some evidence to suggest that these collaborations might be mutually beneficial, in that the local person or group gets something of value out of learning more about technology and computing during CRC projects with teachers and researchers . ...
... A major part of the CRC research program is identifying and building up localized assets as part of technology-oriented teaching and learning (Scott et al., 2015;Lachney, 2017a). This provides unique opportunities to not only use computing and computational thinking in the service of communitybased goals and educational projects but also to diffuse computing knowledge across local contexts beyond compulsory schooling. ...
... Furthermore, what does CRD look like in professional settings? For example, members of the Culturally Situated Design Tool research team-who design programming environments to explore the mathematics embedded in Indigenous and vernacular designs (Eglash et al., 2006;Babbitt et al., 2012;Bennett, 2016)-must often make negotiations between the fidelity of cultural designs and the constraints of the software or hardware that they are using to simulate and represent the designs (Lachney, 2017a). What types of CRD practices might these technologists engage in with cultural experts? ...
Despite the value that cultural experts bring to efforts to broaden the participation of racially minoritized youth in US computer science, there has been little research on supporting their knowledge of computing. This is a missed opportunity to explore the diffusion of computing knowledge across local community contexts where underrepresented youth of color spend time. To address this gap, we present one strategy for promoting cultural experts’ early engagement with code, culturally responsive debugging: using culturally situated expertise and knowledge to debug code. We analyzed qualitative data from a professional development workshop for cultural experts to evaluate this strategy. Our findings have implications for broadening participation efforts and supporting non-programmers’ knowledge of code.
... CRC uses the educational affordances of computing technologies and computational thinking to show that the cultural practices, heritages, and knowl-edges of communities of color are important assets for broadening participation in STEM (Eglash, Gilbert, and Foster 2013;Scott, Sheridan, and Clark 2015). While CRC is part of larger broadening participation efforts, it does not start or stop with inclusion and diversity; it seeks to critique and challenge the very structural conditions (e.g., racism, poverty, sexism, colonialism, etc.) that pro-duce marginalization and underrepresentation in the first place Vilchis, Scott, and Besaw 2015;Bennett 2016;Eglash et al. 2017;Lachney 2017a;Cooke et al. 2019;Scott and Elliott 2020). ...
... Some CRC researchers and educators who draw on the ideas of intersectionality and/or cultural capital have referred to locally and culturally situated experiences and expertise (of youth and adults) as 'funds of knowledge' (e.g., Kafai et al. 2014;Scott and Garcia 2016;Lachney 2017a). The concept of funds of knowledge comes from research and theorization on integrating household and familial expertise of Southwestern U.S. working-class Mexican communities (e.g., linguistic expertise, labor expertise, etc.) into classrooms (Moll et al. 1992). ...
... The workshop may have supported a general understanding among workshop participants that their funds of knowledge are relevant to computing and technology in education, but that this was best supported by collaborating with technology experts, like a technology teacher or edu-cational technology researcher. Fortunately, one goal of CRC is to foster collaborations between people with different expertise and funds of knowledge (Lachney 2017a). The librarians identified their funds of knowledge most closely with technology, seeing it as cru-cial to their professional goal of making computing skills and information readily accessible to their patrons. ...
Culturally responsive computing (CRC) frames the localized knowledges and practices of Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities as assets for working toward racial justice in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). A key part of CRC is the role that local communities play in designing and/or implementing curricula and technologies. Yet, there is a dearth of research on collaborating with local knowledge experts and what they think about CRC. In response, this paper details a two-year long research project on the design and implementation of one CRC program called pH Empowered. pH Empowered uses computing to bridge Black hairstyling, chemistry, and entrepreneurship. Through a mixed-methods study of one pH Empowered professional development workshop, we show how cosmetologists, urban farmers, and librarians had diverse perspectives about how to be culturally responsive with STEM and the racial justice goal of broadening participation in STEM education.
... While these tools are readily accessible and have a wide user-base, many forms of personalization remain at a surface level (e.g., simply coding slideshows) and the reproduction of commercial and corporate content as personalization is all too common (Lachney et al., 2016). In order for learning through technology to happen in more critical and transformative ways that go beyond merely reproducing commercial content, technology education can connect with family, community, and/or heritage cultures (Eglash et al. 2013;Moreno Sandoval 2019), as well as political issues and social movements (Lachney, 2017;Scott et al., 2015). This often means creating material and epistemic "trading zones" between professional or educational computing cultures, local community contexts, and Indigenous knowledge systems or vernacular cultural practices (Eglash et al., 2021). ...
... In another case, Lachney and Yadav (2020) showcase how a white middle school technology teacher collaborated with a local African American braider to help students learn block-based programming through computational explorations of the dynamic geometries of cornrow braiding. Lachney (2017) hypothesizes that these types of relationships might not only support in-class learning and teaching but may be advantageous for helping teachers find support when organizing for more school resources and better working conditions. All these cases link personalization and creative expression up with larger contexts, so that children and adults can learn about them in experiential and active ways through computing. ...
The shift to emergency remote teaching in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic suggests that we need new pre-service interventions in supporting teachers’ dynamic and flexible uses and knowledge of technology. In this paper, we argue for the need to do this in teacher preparation programs and the importance of developing pre-service teachers' knowledge of educating children with, about, and through technology. We set a vision for teacher education programs that prepares pre-service teachers to use technology to support teaching and learning in their classrooms (with), identify how technologies lead to productivity and harm (about), and strategize how technologies can support creativity and personal expression (through).
... These definitions recognise the need for CT to be in dialogue with contextual cultural and subject-based knowledge. For Lachney (2017), allowing students to explore aspects of their culture with coding provides not only opportunities for understanding CT vocabulary and concepts, but also for reflecting on their own cultural capital and heritage. ...
... A key aspect of CT in this context is being able to create diverse entry points for others in order to broaden participation in computational communities (Lachney, 2017). CT therefore should include interdisciplinary collaboration to incorporate discussion of relatable content and real-life applications (Tran, 2019) across different subjects (Barr & Stephenson, 2011). ...
Underpinning the teaching of coding with Computational Thinking has proved relevant for diverse learners, particularly given the increasing demand in upskilling for today’s labour market. While literature on computing education is vast, it remains unexplored how existing CT conceptualisations relate to the learning opportunities needed for a meaningful application of coding in non-Computer Scientists’ lives and careers. In order to identify and organise the learning opportunities in the literature about CT, we conducted a configurative literature review of studies published on Web of Science, between 2006 and 2021. Our sample gathers 34 papers and was analysed on NVivo to find key themes. We were able to organise framings of CT and related learning opportunities into three dimensions: functional, collaborative, and critical and creative. These dimensions make visible learning opportunities that range from individual cognitive development to interdisciplinary working with others, and to active participation in a technologically evolving society. By comparing and contrasting frameworks, we identify and explain different perspectives on skills. Furthermore, the three-dimensional model can guide pedagogical design and practice in coding courses.
... In addition to exciting students through the science and technology, we also seek to demonstrate to the students how STEM connects to their backgrounds and how these technical skills can help their communities. This approach is still in its formative stages, but will leverage the work of [5] [6] [7] on culturally-relevant computing, and through implementation of more applied projects that connect to the community. ...
... This level of support provides in-depth training from a subject matter expert over an extended period, while relieving the teacher of some of their teaching duties so that they have the space to learn the material at a deeper level themselves. A program that also employs a co-teaching model that helped to inspire our approach is the Informatics Diversity-Enhanced Workforce (iDEW) program founded in 2015 at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) 5 . ...
This paper describes the development of an engineering pathways program for underserved high school students. The innovating Detroit's Robotics Agile Workforce (iDRAW) program is administered by the University of Detroit Mercy and is in its third year of working with two local high schools. The students are predominantly low-income and from populations historically underrepresented in STEM. The goal of the program is to increase interest in STEM-related careers while reducing barriers to entering such fields. The program aims to provide on-ramps to a range of careers across disciplines (mechanical, electrical, software, etc.) requiring different levels of educational attainment (4-yr university, 2-yr college, apprenticeships, etc.). In the first two years of the program, there were 97 qualifying graduates with nearly half going on to study a STEM discipline in college and over a quarter choosing to major in engineering or computer science at a 4-year university. Of the qualifying graduates, 55% were Latinx, 5% were Black, and 37% were Arab American. Preliminary data shows the program correlated with a modest increase in STEM career interest and students perceived the program to help them prepare for their future, though the program might not have had a positive impact on student self-efficacy in STEM.
... Engaging in such design processes will work to disrupt the paternalistic oppressor-oppressed relationship where educational tools are designed for students, and more clearly position technology, aspirationally, as "manifestations of our attitudes, assumptions and relations in the world" (Papendieck 2018, 4). Lachney et al. (2017) provide inspiration for such design practices, as they showcase how a culturally responsive computing framework can be used to design with schools, communities, and designers in the creation of ethnocomputing programs, including one they profile titled Cornrow Curves. Beyond shallow inclusions of cultural signifiers (e.g. ...
... Despite technological optimism, the task of envisioning technological futures for Indigenous languages involved an immense translation effort or act of 'brokerage' (Lachney 2017) to bridge different logic and knowledge systems and make them accessible to each other. Translation, at times, requires expressing 'what others say and want, why they act in the way they do and how they associate with each other' in one's own language (Callon 1984, 223). ...
This paper examines how language-based artificial intelligence is envisaged to imagine new futures for indigenous languages. It draws on the visions, programmes, and plans of six language initiatives that are developing language technology for often-marginalised indigenous, tribal, and minority (ITM) languages, such as Gondi, Maithili, Rajasthani and Mundari, in India. We note three distinct discourses: (1) technological optimism in utilising these new opportunities by claiming space for otherwise-marginalised languages, (2) the imperative for collaborative and collective work in order to address sparse datasets, and (3) the need to negotiate the contested nature of imagining a new collective future. This paper argues that indigenous language technology is not just a technical project but a contested process of subverting linguistic hierarchy through the 'active presencing' of these languages. Overall, the paper emphasizes the need for a nuanced approach that recognizes the interplay between technology, language education, and broader social and political factors. ARTICLE HISTORY
... Research suggests that using CRC in STEM learning environments can support student learning and address issues of power, race, and gender in order to help students in general and marginalized students specifically (re)imagine their futures (Ryoo, 2019;Barton & Tan, 2010;Ford, 2014;Rosebery et al, 2016;Morales-Chicas et al, 2019). Other research emphasized the idea that CRC supports the connection between school and community in ways that incorporate the knowledge and skills of underrepresented communities into math and computing education, while paving the direction to allow technologies to encourage education-based social movement (Lachney, 2016;Eglash et al, 2013). Ashcraft et al, (2017) highlighted through their research on COMPUGIRLS, how the implementation of CRP positively affected girls in computing. ...
This Design-Based Research (DBR) study was conducted over a two-year period, and investigated the transformative learning of six high school computer science teachers through the application of professional development (PD) training with a focus on Culturally Responsive Computing (CRC). Findings reveal ways in which teachers’ understanding and enactment of CRC in their classrooms led to increased student engagement, knowledge of diverse learning needs, and improved access to cultural resources to specifically meet girls’ needs. The authors discovered positive effects on the teachers’ strategies in the classroom, especially in terms of understanding how historically marginalized students benefit from instruction that considers their cultural practices and gender identities.
... Alternatively, future studies might focus on identifying cultural heritage artifacts that introduce powerful ideas from CT to young children in developmentally appropriate ways. Examples using cornrow hairstyles in the African diaspora ( Eglash et al., 2013 ) and iterative patterns in weaving ( Lachney, 2017 ) in middle and high school computer science education exist, but models for early childhood computer science education are yet to be developed. ...
The specific mechanisms by which teachers and parents can provide culturally relevant opportunities for computational thinking for racially/ethnically and linguistically diverse groups of preschoolers remain unknown. Accordingly, the purpose of this research is to examine how PreK parent and teacher voice directed efforts to realize a culturally relevant computing program. We drew data sources from a subsample of design-based research meetings in which partners collaborated to co-develop the first iteration of the program. Using qualitative analysis, we examined how parent voice and teacher voice, conceptualized as perspectives and participation, influenced theories of culturally responsive computing and computational thinking in early childhood education and the translation of theory into practice in classroom and home settings. Findings showed that connecting powerful ideas from computational thinking, namely algorithms and problem solving (e.g., debugging), to familiar activities and experiences served as a powerful entry point. Yet, differences arose in how teachers and parents conceptualized culturally relevant computing and made connections to familiar routines. We discuss what can be learned from parent voice in regards to bolstering children's self-expression, access to increasingly complex computational thinking tasks, and opportunities for learning cultural and community values through computing.
... Instead, it builds on culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 2014), culturally responsive teaching (Gay, 2018), and culturally sustaining pedagogies (Paris, 2012). CRC seeks to challenge deficit modes of education -that is, education that frames the families, communities, heritages, interests, and cultures of students, especially Black, Brown, and Indigenous students, as antithetical to academics -within computing and technology education (Lachney, 2017). Scott et al. (2014) explained four goals that CRC should try and meet. ...
... Culturally responsive computing practices have been used to raise students' sociopolitical consciousness in their communities (Scott et al., 2015), acknowledge students' cultural heritage through artifacts in computing (Babbitt et al., 2015), connect computing experiences with the local environment of participants (Eglash et al., 2011), personalize CS learning experiences (Kafai et al., 2014), build community connections among local community members, students and schools (Lachney, 2017), and recognize students' self-identities (Ashcraft et al., 2017) and connections to the participants' real world context (Xie & Reider, 2014). ...
Implementing computer science education in an elementary classroom is at the forefront of computing education. Nevertheless, the literature on K-12 Computer Science (CS) education offers limited guidance for developing elementary CS curricula that lead to multiple career paths through project-based learning. Particularly, more research is needed on culturally responsive elementary school computing that leverages students’ cultural references to create a more equitable CS education that acknowledges one’s identity, culture, or background in the curriculum planning. This paper offers an approach for designing culturally responsive computing for upper elementary students from a highly diverse, low socio-economic school district using a research-practice approach. The approach can be adapted for other schools that face unique diversity and curricular challenges.
... But the lack of a unified front in her support network shows an important and potentially overlooked aspect of the types of networks and relationships this and other students have: although related research is often situated in a "community, " a "school, " or with a "family, " the individuals that make up these collective nouns are individually important for students' learning pathways. In this way, our work fits with research and design initiatives that aim to better coordinate learning ecologies across settings [26,48]. ...
We use an autoethnographic case study of a Latinx high school student from a rural, agricultural community in California to highlight how AI is learned outside classrooms and how her personal background influenced her social-justice oriented applications of AI technologies. Applying the concept of learning pathways from the learning sciences, we argue that redesigning AI education to be more inclusive with respect to socioeconomic status, ethnoracial identity, and gender is important in the development of computational projects that address social-injustice. We also learn about the role of institutions, power structures, and community as they relate to her journey of learning and applying AI. The future of AI, its potential to address issues of social injustice and limiting the negative consequences of its use, will depend on the participation and voice of students from the most vulnerable communities.
... The development of educational tools addresses the need for connections between technical concepts and indigenous knowledge. In particular, ethnocomputing scholars and practitioners search for parallels to concepts of "algorithms, data storage, or other informational structures" in Indigenous cultural practices, such as "iterative patterns in weaving," or "binary codes in divination" (Lachney, 2016). In many cases, this produces co-developed and co-designed culturally salient technological artifacts to assist in education. ...
Integrating Indigenous culture into STEM education is a critical process in building pathways to justice and diversifying design. This process serves to (re)center our conceptions of STEM education by challenging strictly Western notions of STEM, representing an opportunity for learning not just in curricular design, but in technological design as well. Postcolonial computing scholars have critically examined design processes, highlighting the dominance of Western knowledge undergirding cross-cultural design. However, such efforts have yet to fully leverage insights from national curricular (re)centering initiatives. We take up this opportunity through a qualitative case study of an educational outreach organization in British Columbia, Canada, a subsidiary of a nation-wide effort in curricular integration of Indigenous and Western STEM material. Applying postcolonial computing thought, we offer enrichments to theory by providing an empirical basis for a) integrating resiliency, b) politicization in design, and c) arguments for (re)centering epistemological authority in computing. These contributions both enrich theory and enhance the practice of cross-cultural design by encouraging and exploring an Indigenous (re)centering of our understanding of both curricular and technological design.
... As student and community knowledge is celebrated and woven into curricula, culturally-situated technologies are employed, and educational relationships are galvanized, dominant structures within schools and computing classrooms can be altered for marginalized student groups that continue to be deeply underrepresented [7]. Emerging studies have found that e-textiles can help students learn about computing, circuitry, and crafting in public school classrooms [8]. ...
This paper identified and analyzed computer science educators' culturally responsive approaches to teaching an electronic textiles curricular unit in their high school classes. By examining surveys, interviews, and weekly reflections from 17 teachers, this qualitative study reports how learning about electronic textiles, and then teaching this curricular unit to students, enabled teachers to better support their learners through empathy, relationships, and a new appreciation for how students' home and cultural knowledge. We found that educators honored expertise not typically valued in computer science, brokered rich, authentic interactions with students in and outside of class, strengthened school-home connections, and uplifted students who had not felt successful in computing environments before.
... This conception includes addressing issues of accessibility for students with disabilities, 6 creating gender-inclusive curricula and programs, 7 and utilization of frameworks of culturally and linguistically relevant pedagogy. [8][9][10][11] Such approaches acknowledge that issues of equitable access for underrepresented groups and inextricably linked to modes of inclusive pedagogy. ...
This article explores the intersection of two central issues in computer science education (CSed)what is meant by equitable computer science education and how attendant equity goals play out as school districts attempt to implement comprehensive K12 CSed initiatives. Based on analysis of qualitative data gathered over 15 months of one district's efforts in this area, our findings illustrate how varying conceptualizations of equitable CSed are at play during institutional change processes in a school district, and how negotiation and management of differing equity-related goals takes place within CSed systems change efforts. The implications of this work point to the need of district-wide CSed efforts to engage stakeholders from across levels in the system in the process of planning and implementation. Additionally, we see a potential need for deliberative routines where various conceptions and attendant goals around equityboth related and unrelated to CSedcan be understood and negotiated among district actors.
... Paris and Alim (2017) caution against a strictly asset-oriented view of culture that risks commodifying it for state-sanctioned ends, arguing for the need to sustain and respect cultural dynamics in and of themselves beyond their use-value to schools. CSDTs further these goals by designing socio-technical environments where computing power works in service of CoP by reflecting culturally situated identities, traditions, and assets (Eglash et al., 2013;Scott et al., 2015;Lachney, 2017). ...
In the U.S. there are steady efforts by governmental and philanthropic organizations to increase the representation of students of colour in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). After years of mixed results, researchers and educators have started to question one size fits all notions of broadening participation. An increasing number of projects are challenging universalist assumptions by enrolling the expertise of culturally situated communities of practice in STEM lessons and the educational technologies that support them. While this research shows promising results for improving young people’s interest and performance in STEM, there has been little research on how these lessons and technologies might also benefit the communities whose expertise were originally enrolled. This paper details the design of educational technologies that bridge STEM and African American cosmetology. We report on a mixed-methods research project, conducted with a group of predominantly African American cosmetologists. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected to study their attitudes toward STEM before and after working with the technologies. Our results suggest positive changes in the cosmetologists’ attitudes. We end with a critical discussion about respecting the knowledge systems of underrepresented communities of practice in educational technology research and development.
... This acknowledges that translations will always be partial at best; the vast depths of Indigenous knowledge cannot be simply "ported" to Western classrooms as if they are a formula in a book. (3) Contact zones: the technology interface design process inhabits a "contact zone" (Haraway 2016) which, through iterative feedback, evolves toward a design acceptable to teachers, community collaborators, and students alike (Lachney 2017a). (4) Design agency: student learners are not merely simulating older designs, but discovering "heritage algorithms"-algorithms found in cultural arts and designs, such as African American braiding and Native American quilting (Bennett 2016)-to deploy in the creation of new patterns of their own. ...
This paper introduces a generative framework in which translations of Indigenous knowledge systems can expand student agency in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Students move from computer simulations to physical renderings, to repurposing STEM innovation and discovery in the service of Indigenous community development. We begin with the math and computing ideas in traditional Anishinaabe arcs; describe their translation into software and physical rendering techniques, and finally their workshop implementation with a mix of Native and non-Native students. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of pre-survey and post-survey data indicate increases in students’ understanding of Indigenous knowledge, their creative ability to utilize it in moving from algorithmic to physical designs, and their visions for new hybrid forms of Indigenous futurity. We use these findings to argue that culture-based education needs to shift from a vindicationist mode of admiring ancient achievements, to one that highlights students’ agency in a generative relationship with cultural knowledge.
The advances of artificial intelligence (AI) have impacted and opened opportunities for almost every single industry. Meanwhile, it also holds potential to address pressing societal issues such as traffic, climate change, and poverty. It is therefore crucial to educate the next generation of students from various disciplines to be capable of practical AI skills while having the awareness and confidence to innovatively contribute to their communities. We introduce the AI for Social Good (AI4SG) project that aims to teach AI through the lens of social good to students of multiple disciplines. We deployed the AI4SG curriculum among 514 undergraduate students in management information systems, geography, and computer science at three universities. Students reported increased level of interest and curiosity in learning AI, appreciated project-based learning, and developed learning space within and beyond their classroom.
In the United States, culturally responsive computing is a framework that aims to support broadening the participation of racially and linguistically diverse children in computing and technology education through bottom-up interventions that are community-oriented, technology rich, and culturally dynamic. Despite the important role that youth sports play in many local neighborhoods and communities across demographic groups there is only a small amount of research on developing culturally responsive computing education that incorporates these activities. We report findings from a culturally responsive computing collaboration between computing education researchers and coaches, mentors, and academic staff who ran a youth boxing program that predominantly served African American children. The purpose of the collaboration was to learn about and represent the adults’ expertise and knowledge in the co-development of culturally responsive computing activities. Using an emergent mixed methods research design, we collected qualitative data (i.e., interviews and group discussions) and quantitative data (i.e., pre- and post-surveys) throughout the collaboration. We analyzed these data to study how coaches, mentors, and staff members brought their knowledge and expertise to bear on the co-development of culturally responsive computing activities for the youth boxing program. Our findings show how the coaches, mentors, and academic staff used their expertise and knowledge in ways that leveraged boxing culture to go beyond boxing itself in the co-development of the activities. In addition, even when connections between computing and boxing did not appear authentically motivated this did not negate the adults’ engagement with the culturally responsive computing project. These findings have implications for anti-deficit theorizing about authenticity and inauthenticity in the co-development of culturally responsive computing in youth sports contexts. The construction of authenticity in culturally responsive computing might be less understood as a direct translation from community into education and more so as a negotiation between locally defined demarcations of what is considered authentic and inauthentic.
The present study examined how the type of school technology and teachers’ technological experiences (either personal or pedagogical) were related to teacher perceptions of culturally responsive teaching in technology-supported learning environments. Additionally, the study assessed the moderating effects of school technology interactivity on the relationship between teacher technology experiences and their perception of culturally responsive teaching in these environments. Hierarchical linear modeling was conducted on data from 257 teachers in Taiwan. Results found that the presence of technology interactivity in schools, teachers’ personal technology experiences, and technology experiences in teaching each had a positive and statistically significant effect on teachers’ perception of culturally responsive teaching. In addition, results found that the presence of interactive technology had no significant moderating effect on the relationship between either personal technology integration or technology integration in teaching and any of the five dimensions of culturally responsive teaching. The results suggest that, in addition to technological infrastructure renovation, schools should provide teachers with professional development programs and support which encourages them to create a technology-infused environment to address the connections between students’ cultural contexts and their learning contents.
The ideas we offer below for considering justice-centered computing education point to a broad array of problem-spaces, contexts, and communities that scholars, educators, technologists, and activists might engage with. In exploring and deepening the conversation around this project, the seven articles included in the first volume of this special issue employ diverse theoretical perspectives, methodologies, and frameworks, including but not limited to intersectionality, transformational justice, intercultural computing, ethnocomputing, translanguaging, socially responsible computing, and institutional theory. Across them, rather than consensus on a narrow set of issues, we see the possibilities of a pluralistic and wide-ranging conversation about how we might constitute the meanings of “justice-centered” within computing education, the tools that might be used to produce such meanings, and the actions that might address them.
Computer Science education (CSed) often aims to position youth as designers, creators, and those with a voice in their world. But do youth have opportunities to design, create, and have voice around the shape of their CSed learning experiences? In this study, we explore ways that school districts engage youth to contribute to the shaping and enactment of their CS instructional systems, efforts districts make to have these leadership roles create impact within these systems, and the tensions associated with these processes. Through in depth analysis of five district case studies, our findings highlight variance around the nature of leadership roles , how access to leadership roles is structured, student autonomy within and ownership over leadership roles, how roles reach into and index differential power over instructional systems , and how district processes of scaffolding and infrastructuring mediate the ultimate impact that students in these roles are able to have on CS instructional systems. Findings also surfaced ways that district actors dealt with a number of tensions associated with student leadership within CS instructional systems. This study provides educators, administrators, and researchers with an expansive view of the potential for students to play legitimate roles within the context of system-wide instructional efforts around CS, and aims to expand conceptions of ‘equitable computer science’—up to this point largely conceived of through the lenses of access to, participation in, and experiences of CS learning—to focus on equity as also being about who has ‘a seat at the table’ when it comes to CS.
Background: As teachers work to broaden the participation of racially and ethnically underrepresented groups in computer science (CS), culturally responsive computing (CRC) becomes more pertinent to formal settings.
Objective: Yet, equity-oriented literature offers limited guidance for developing deep forms of CRC in the classroom. In response, we support the claim that “it takes a village” to develop equity-oriented CS education but additively highlight the roles of cultural experts in the process.
Methods: We use a case study methodology to explore one instance of this: a collaboration between a multi-racial team of researchers, a Black cosmetologist, and a White technology teacher.
Findings: Three themes supported the CRC collaboration: multi-directional relationship building, iterative engagement with culture-computing, and collaborative implementation of a hybrid lesson.
Implications: As opposed to orienting broadening participation around extractive metaphors like “pipelines,” our case study constructs the metaphor of an “open village” to orient CS education toward collaborations between schools and the communities they serve.
In this study, the authors analyzed data from a sample of thirty-two middle school students from an urban school district in the southeastern United States who used MIT’s App Inventor to design, create, and remix mobile apps during an afterschool program for one school year. This paper focuses on computer science learning outcomes as measured by an assessment created by the authors. Findings indicated a linear relation between the number of apps a participant created during the given afterschool program and their level of accuracy on the assessment. Findings and discussion should be of interest to both researchers and practitioners.
Equity is arguably an agreed upon value within the Computer Science education (CSed) community, and perhaps even more so within efforts to universalize access to CSed within K12 settings through emerging ‘CS for All’ initiatives. However, stakeholders often mean different things when referring to equity, with important implications for what CS teaching and learning looks like in schools. In this paper, we explore the question of how K12 school district actors’ conceptualizations of equity manifest within their planning and implementation of district-wide CSed initiatives. Based on a research-practice partnership aimed at supporting and researching district-wide CSed initiatives, data presented - interviews with district faculty, district planning documents, meeting transcripts and field observations - were drawn from five participating school districts as they made decisions and enacted activities over 11 months in areas including vision-setting, curriculum, professional development, leadership efforts and use of formative data about implementation. Analyzing these data through equity frameworks found in CSed literature, we highlight three distinct but interconnected ways that district actors conceptualized equity within their CSed initiatives: (1) equity in who Computer Science is for, (2) equity in how Computer Science is taught, and (3) equity in what Computer Science is taught. Data show that these varied conceptualizations resulted in different kinds of decisions about CSed in districts. We discuss the implications of these findings in terms of their relevance to equity-oriented CS education researchers, and what lessons they hold for policy-makers and education leaders engaged in their own efforts to support equitable computer science education.
College is a critical time when changes in students' attitudes, knowledge, personality characteristics, and self-concepts are affected by their face-to-face and online interactions with educators, peers, and the campus climate (Astin, 1997). The growing use of big data and analytics in higher education has fostered research that supports human judgement in the analysis of information about learning and the application of interventions that can aid students in their development and improve retention rates (Siemens & Baker, 2012). This information is often displayed in the form of learning analytics dashboards (LADs), which are individual displays with multiple visualizations of indicators about learners, their learning activities, and/or features of the learning context both at the individual and group levels (Schwendimann et al., 2017). The information presented in LADs is intended to support students' learning competencies that include metacognitive, cognitive, behavioral, and emotional self-regulation (Jivet et al., 2018). We investigated the impact of a student-facing LAD on students' self-concepts and viewing preferences to address the following questions: What are students' viewing preferences (i.e., for individual vs. comparative performance feedback)? How does viewing performance information affect the development of students' metacognitive skills and self-concepts? And, what are students' perceptions about the usability of LADs? In an end-of-term survey, 111 students at a large research university responded to 10 Likert scale and three open-ended questions. Overall, the students reported understanding the information that was presented to them through the LAD and that it was useful, although some students expressed concerns about its accuracy and wanted more detailed information. Students also reported that they preferred to view comparisons to other students over just viewing their own performance information, and that LAD use increased positive affect about performance. Students also reported that dashboard use affected how much they believed they understood the course material, the time and effort they were willing to put into the course, and that it lessened their anxiety. We concluded that course-specific or program-specific related outcomes may require different LAD design and evaluation approaches, and the nonuse of the LAD may be linked to self-confidence, forgetfulness, and a lack of innovative dashboard features. Our study was limited by the analysis of survey data (without trace data), and the sample size. This research contributes to the literature on student-facing learning analytics dashboards (LADs) by investigating students' reasons for interacting with dashboards, their viewing preferences, and how their interactions affect their performance and tying these insights to educational concepts that were a part of the LAD design. Further research is needed to determine whether presenting students with the option to turn on the dashboard for any or all of their courses over the course of the semester is important,
Using two case studies I map out intellectual genealogies in which generative frameworks—portraits of life’s flourishing as open, hybridizing, and self-transforming--emerged in the exchanges between anti-racists and the scientific community. The first case is a detailed look at the exchanges between abolitionists and scientists: Frederick Douglass, Henry Bowditch, Charles Darwin, and others. Here a generative framework emerges as an alternative to racist portraits of fixed order in biology, as well as an alternative to the fixed order of segregation and cultural purity. The second case is a comparison with the open-ended sympoiesis in Native American agroecologies, and the first emergence of a movement to decolonize diets. We will end with a brief look a generative frameworks in science/activist alliances today. Together these cases can illuminate the reasons why open-ended hybridity, not closed-loop purity, is key to understanding the possible paths to a world based on generative justice.
The race and gender gap in US STEM education achievement reflects the legacy of historical forces which include colonialism and the exclusion of women in higher education. But it also reflects the decontextualized character of standard educational forms. We report on cSELF (Computer Science Education from Life), an intervention which brings together two alternative approaches. The “creative medium” approach offers a blank slate in which youth create their own innovations. The “indigenous knowledge” approach helps to translate traditional math and computing concepts into contemporary forms. Using the concept of “design agency” the authors describe how this merging of abstract formal structures, material creative practice, and cultural knowledge can improve underrepresented student performance, and foster learning practices in computing that offer broader forms of social expression and deeper STEM engagement for all students.
We draw attention to the intersection of race/ethnicity and gender in computing education by examining the experiences of ten American Indian boys (12-14 years old) who participated in introductory computing activities with electronic textiles. To date, the use of electronic textiles (e-textiles) materials in introductory computing activities have been shown to be particularly appealing to girls and women because they combine craft, circuitry, and computing. We hypothesized that e-textiles would be appealing to American Indian boys because of a strong community-based craft tradition linked to heritage cultural practices. In order to understand boys' perspectives on learning computing through making culturally-relevant e-textiles artifacts, we analyzed boys' completed artifacts as documented in photographs and code screenshots, their design practices as documented in daily field notes and video logs of classroom sessions, and their reflections from interviews guided by the following research questions: (1) How did American Indian boys initially engage with e-textiles materials? (2) How did boys' computational perspectives develop through the process of making and programming their own e-textiles artifacts? Our findings highlight the importance of connecting to larger community value systems as a context for doing computing, the importance of allowing space for youth to make decisions within the constraints of the design task, and the value of tangible e-textiles artifacts in providing linkages between home and school spaces. We connect our work to other efforts to engage racial and ethnic minority students in computing and discuss the implications of our work for computer science educators designing computing curricula for increasingly diverse groups of students, especially as pertains to the emerging field of culturally responsive computing.
Ethnocomputing is the study of the intersections between culture and computing. In addition to cultural analysis of computing, it also utilizes computing to model artifacts or practices from a given culture. In this essay, we consider three modes of modeling. In the first mode, the knowledge flow is unidirectional: the researcher analyzes indigenous designs and provides a computing model. In the second mode, the knowledge flow is bidirectional with researchers bringing a technical etic (outsider) perspective and informants bringing a cultural emic (insider) perspective. In the third mode, knowledge flow is recursive; there are bidirectional flows nested within other bidirectional flows. Our case study begins with computer simulations of log curves in Adinkra symbols in Ghana. Thus, we show that there are nested flows between nature and the indigenous artisans who model nature’s growth patterns; between our own ethnocomputing simulations and the students and teachers in Ghanaian classrooms; and finally between the history of computing in the West and the implementation of educational technology. Our data indicates that a recursive model that can account for these nested flows better enables researchers to integrate social justice and sustainability with education and research in both social and technical domains.
Keywords: Agency; Ethnocomputing; Indigenous Design; Modeling; Translation.
Much attention has focused on the lack of diversity in access and participation in digital media available to youth. Far less attention has been paid to the diversity of youth creators and the content that is produced by youth. We examined the diversity of project creators, content, and comments in one of the largest youth programming sites called Scratch (scratch.mit.edu), with over 7 million registered members between ages 6-16, over 10 million posted projects and 16 million comments. We used keyword and webcrawler searches to reveal that only a small number of users (<.01%) self-disclosed their racial and ethnic identities. Case studies further illuminated how project designs and comments delved into race, provided cultural critique or addressed racial harassment. In the discussion, we address these blind spots of diversity in massive online DIY youth communities, discuss methodological limitations, and provide recommendations for future directions in supporting diversity.
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This paper details the development and evaluation of software that allows middle school students to explore the mathematical aspects of Ghanaian Adinkra symbols. We tested the effectiveness of this simulation in a Ghanaian junior high school by conducting a randomized quasi-experiment. We begin this paper by framing culturally responsive math education within the interventionist tradition of ethnomathematics. We draw this tradition together with an empirical exploration of the mathematics embedded in Adinkra symbols. We follow this with a methodological explanation for how we translated the mathematical significance of Adinkra into the design of our software, “Culturally Situated Design Tools.” Finally, we describe the quasi-experimental evaluation of the software using a randomized assignment of students in control and intervention groups in Ghana. We found statistically significant improvement for students using the culture-based software in comparison to similar software with no cultural content.
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Ethnomathematics faces two challenges: first, it must investigate the mathematical ideas in cultural practices that are often assumed to be unrelated to mathematics. Second, even if we are successful in finding this previously unrecognized mathematics, applying this to children’s education may be difficult. In this essay, we will describe the use of computational media to help address both of these challenges.
Despite the fact that computer science (CS) is the driver of technological innovations across all disciplines and aspects of our lives, including participatory media, high school CS too commonly fails to incorporate the perspectives and concerns of low-income students of color. This article describes a partnership program – Exploring Computer Science (ECS) – that directly counters this problem in our nation's second largest school district. With a mission of democratizing CS learning, we argue that despite the constraints of working within public schools, it is imperative to do so. We discuss the ECS program based on inquiry, culturally relevant curriculum, and equity-oriented pedagogy. We describe two ECS-affiliated projects that highlight the importance of authorship, purpose, and agency for student learning and engagement: DietSens using mobile technology to study community health, and a project in which students create video games about social issues. Our work offers a counter-narrative to those who have written off the possibilities of working within public schools and a debunking of the too widespread myth within our educational system that females and students of color are inherently uninterested in rigorous CS learning.
Improving academic success and social development by merging computational thinking with cultural practices.
There have been many efforts to increase access and participation of indigenous communities in computer science education using ethnocomputing. In this paper, we extend culturally responsive computing by using electronic textiles that leverage traditional crafting and sewing practices to help students learn about engineering and computing as they also engage with local indigenous knowledges. Electronic textiles include sewable microcontrollers that can be connected to sensors and actuators by stitching circuits with conductive thread. We present findings from a junior high Native Arts class and an academically-oriented summer camp in which Native American youth ages 12-15 years created individual and collective e-textile designs using the LilyPad Arduino. In our discussion we address how a culturally responsive open design approach to ethnocomputing with e-textile activities can provide a productive but also challenging context for design agency and cultural connections for American Indian youth, and how these findings can inform the design of a broader range of introductory computational activities for all.
The academic performance and engagement of youth from under-represented ethnic groups (African American, Latino, and Indigenous) in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) show statistically large gaps in comparison with their White and Asian peers. Some of these differences can be attributed to the direct impact of economic forces. But cultural factors also play a role. This essay will examine two culturally responsive math education technologies and report on evaluations of the technologies in urban out-of-school settings that suggest both approaches can be effective for integrating math education into urban, after-school contexts.
In the midst of discussions about improving education, teacher education, equity, and diversity, little has been done to make pedagogy a central area of investigation. This article attempts to challenge notions about the intersection of culture and teaching that rely solely on microanalytic or macroanalytic perspectives. Rather, the article attempts to build on the work done in both of these areas and proposes a culturally relevant theory of education. By raising questions about the location of the researcher in pedagogical research, the article attempts to explicate the theoretical framework of the author in the nexus of collaborative and reflexive research. The pedagogical practices of eight exemplary teachers of African-American students serve as the investigative "site." Their practices and reflections on those practices provide a way to define and recognize culturally relevant pedagogy.
Ethnomathematics is the study of mathematical ideas and practices situated in their cultural context. Culturally Situated Design Tools (CSDTs) are web-based software applications that allow students to create simulations of cultural arts—Native American beadwork, African American cornrow hairstyles, urban graffiti, and so forth—using these underlying mathematical principles. This article is a review of the anthropological issues raised in the CSDT project: negotiating the representations of cultural knowledge during the design process with community members, negotiating pedagogical features with math teachers and their students, and reflecting on the software development itself as a cultural construction. The move from ethnomathematics to ethnocomputing results in an expressive computational medium that affords new opportunities to explore the relationships between youth identity and culture, the cultural construction of mathematics and computing, and the formation of cultural and technological hybridity.
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
Math in a Cultural Context (MCC) was developed from ethnographic work with Yup'ik elders and teachers. The need for culturally based curricula seems obvious to those in the field of educational anthropology, but not necessarily to policymakers. Two case studies of novice teachers, one cultural "insider" and one "outsider," illustrate how each effectively taught MCC. The insider transformed her teaching by allowing student ownership through inquiry and cultural connections. The outsider deepened her mathematics content knowledge and found a perfect pedagogical fit through MCC. © 2005 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved.
This article describes the use of fractal simulations of African design in a high school computing class. Fractal patterns---repetitions of shape at multiple scales---are a common feature in many aspects of African design. In African architecture we often see circular houses grouped in circular complexes, or rectangular houses in rectangular complexes. Typically the accompanying ceremonies, cosmologies, and other traditions make use of scaling and recursion in their conceptual models. African scaling designs include textiles, sculpture, adornment, and other forms; in many cases there are explicit geometric algorithms and other formal aspects (e.g., pseudorandom number generation in divination systems) embedded in the associated indigenous knowledge system. Thus African fractals provide a strong counter to stereotypes of African culture as primitive or simplistic. Following this fieldwork, we developed a Web site which uses Java simulations of these African designs to teach computational perspectives on fractals to high school students.1 We hypothesized that this combination of anti-primitivist “ethnocomputing” and design-based creative learning would enhance both the engagement and performance of under-represented students in computing. A quasi-experimental study used two 10th grade computing classes, both taught by the same instructor, and both including more than 50% under-represented students (Latino and African American). The control class received six days of instruction using a popular Web site (with Java applets but no cultural content or design activities) for high school fractal lessons; the experimental class received the same amount of instruction using our Web site. Pre/post differences on both achievement and attitude tests indicate statistically significant improvement for the students in the experimental class. Potential implications for improving participation and achievement of under-represented students in computing education are discussed.
What does it mean to be an expert? In Rethinking Expertise, Harry Collins and Robert Evans offer a radical new perspective on the role of expertise in the practice of science and the public evaluation of technology. Collins and Evans present a Periodic Table of Expertises based on the idea of tacit knowledgeâknowledge that we have but cannot explain. They then look at how some expertises are used to judge others, how laypeople judge between experts, and how credentials are used to evaluate them. Throughout, Collins and Evans ask an important question: how can the public make use of science and technology before there is consensus in the scientific community? This book has wide implications for public policy and for those who seek to understand science and benefit from it. âStarts to lay the groundwork for solving a critical problemâhow to restore the force of technical scientific information in public controversies, without importing disguised political agendas.ââNature âA rich and detailed âperiodic tableâ of expertise . . . full of case studies, anecdotes and intriguing experiments.ââTimes Higher Education Supplement (UK)
Why every child needs to learn to code: the shift from “computational thinking” to computational participation.
Coding, once considered an arcane craft practiced by solitary techies, is now recognized by educators and theorists as a crucial skill, even a new literacy, for all children. Programming is often promoted in K-12 schools as a way to encourage “computational thinking”—which has now become the umbrella term for understanding what computer science has to contribute to reasoning and communicating in an ever-increasingly digital world.
In Connected Code, Yasmin Kafai and Quinn Burke argue that although computational thinking represents an excellent starting point, the broader conception of “computational participation” better captures the twenty-first-century reality. Computational participation moves beyond the individual to focus on wider social networks and a DIY culture of digital “making.”
Kafai and Burke describe contemporary examples of computational participation: students who code not for the sake of coding but to create games, stories, and animations to share; the emergence of youth programming communities; the practices and ethical challenges of remixing (rather than starting from scratch); and the move beyond stationary screens to programmable toys, tools, and textiles.
On June 16, 2006, an article appeared in the Wall Street Journal profiling the research of Dr. Bruce Lahn, a University of Chicago professor of human genetics (Regalado 2006). The article summarized two of Lahn's published research papers in which he and his co-authors identified two genes that they argued likely provided an adaptive advantage in the form of improved cognition (Evans et al. 2005; Mekel-Bobrov et al. 2005). An additional finding was that the favored alleles demonstrated a pronounced geographic pattern that made them the least common in sub-Saharan Africa. © 2012 by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. All rights reserved.
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of its publication, Michael W. Apple has thoroughly updated his influential text, and written a new preface. The new edition also includes an extended interview circa 2001, in which Apple relates the critical agenda outlined in Ideology and Curriculum to the more contemporary conservative climate. Finally, a new chapter titled "Pedagogy, Patriotism and Democracy: Ideology and Education After 9/11" is also included.
Following a wide-ranging interrogation of the ideological dimensions of educational technology, this book examines in detail specific types of digital technology in use in education today, including virtual education, ‘open’ courses, digital games, and social media. It then concludes with specific recommendations for fairer forms of educational technology. An ideal read for anyone interested in the fast-changing nature of contemporary education, Distrusting Educational Technology comprises an ambitious and much-needed critique.
Urban education and its contexts have changed in powerful ways. Old paradigms are being eclipsed by global forces of privatization and markets and new articulations of race, class, and urban space. These factors and more set the stage for Pauline Lipman's insightful analysis of the relationship between education policy and the neoliberal economic, political, and ideological processes that are reshaping cities in the United States and around the globe.
Jean Anyon's groundbreaking new book reveals the influence of federal and metropolitan policies and practices on the poverty that plagues schools and communities in American cities and segregated, low-income suburbs. Public policies…such as those regulating the minimum wage, job availability, tax rates, federal transit, and affordable housing…all create conditions in urban areas that no education policy as currently conceived can transcend. In this first book since her best-selling Ghetto Schooling, Jean Anyon argues that we must replace these federal and metro-area policies with more equitable ones so that urban school reform can have positive life consequences for students.
Chapter American polygeny and craniometry before Darwin : blacks and Indians as separate, inferior species
Notes in computer files
An ambitious project to help economically disadvantaged students develop technical, creative, and analytical skills across a learning ecology that spans school, community, home, and online.
The popular image of the “digital native”—usually depicted as a technically savvy and digitally empowered teen—is based on the assumption that all young people are equally equipped to become innovators and entrepreneurs. Yet young people in low-income communities often lack access to the learning opportunities, tools, and collaborators (at school and elsewhere) that help digital natives develop the necessary expertise. This book describes one approach to address this disparity: the Digital Youth Network (DYN), an ambitious project to help economically disadvantaged middle-school students in Chicago develop technical, creative, and analytical skills across a learning ecology that spans school, community, home, and online.
The book reports findings from a pioneering mixed-method three-year study of DYN and how it nurtured imaginative production, expertise with digital media tools, and the propensity to share these creative capacities with others. Through DYN, students, despite differing interests and identities—the gamer, the poet, the activist—were able to find some aspect of DYN that engaged them individually and connected them to one another. Finally, the authors offer generative suggestions for designers of similar informal learning spaces.
We examine gaps between minorities and whites in education and labor market outcomes, controlling for many covariates including maternal race. Identification comes from different reported races within the family. Estimates show two distinct patterns. First, there are no significant differences in outcomes between black and white males with white mothers. Second, large differences persist between these groups and black males with black mothers. The patterns are insensitive to alternative measures of own race and school fixed effects. Our results suggest that discrimination is not occurring on the basis of child skin color but through mother-child channels such as dialect or parenting practices.
Despite multiple efforts and considerable funding, historically marginalized groups (e.g., racial minorities and women) continue not to enter or persist in the most lucrative of fields - technology. Understanding the potency of culturally responsive teaching (CRT), some technology-enrichment programs modified CRP principles to establish a culturally responsive computing (CRC) experience for disenfranchised groups. We draw from our respective praxes developing two such initiatives and reconceptualize CRC as a heuristic. In this theoretical article, we offer a more nuanced vision of CRC considering intersectionality, innovations, and technosocial activism. Implications for the newly defined tenets consider programmatic, theoretical, and methodological concerns.
While the potential benefits of participating in online learning communities are documented, so too are inequities in terms of how different populations access and use them. We present the online learning support roles (OLSR) framework, an approach using both automated analytics and qualitative interpretation to identify and explore online teaching roles. We analyze the OLSR using data logs of iRemix, the online component of the Digital Youth Network, a face-to-face and online program for urban youth in underserved communities. In three middle-school classrooms, six educators used iRemix most to interact with individual students, especially as a window into their work. Although many roles were documented, few were played regularly, raising questions about design and intentionality. To address participation inequities, our results suggest that the OLSR and related data can be used to support productive practice improvement conversations among educators and to inform the design of online social learning networks.
This article investigates the motivations of African American and Latino girls (N = 41) who navigate urban Southwest school districts during the day, but voluntarily attend a 2-year, culturally responsive multimedia program after school and into the summer. Understanding that girls from economically disadvantaged settings are indeed motivated to become technological innovators but often do not have access to the necessary resources to follow their interest, our program—entitled COMPUGIRLS—assumes a culturally responsive computing approach. This research examines particular features of the program (e.g., asset building, reflections, and connectedness) that attracted and retained the Latina (74%) and African American (19%) adolescent (ages 13-18) participants as well as to what extent the culturally relevant aspects of the curriculum assist with program retention and/or affect the students’ vision of themselves as a future technologist. An evaluative approach gathered 2 years of data from the participants. Field notes from observations and interviews were transcribed and reviewed to extract themes and areas of convergence. As a standpoint theory project, the authors center the girls’ voices as the primary data sources. Two primary themes emerged from the data to explain girls’ sustained motivation. The first was the challenge of learning and mastering the technology. For many, this also included disproving the stereotypes of their abilities by age, gender, and race. The second theme was being able to manipulate technology and learning experiences as a means of self-expression and research, particularly if the results could be used to inform their community and peers. The authors posit that much of the program impact was because of the culturally responsive practices (asset building, reflection, and connectedness) embedded within the curriculum. Implications for urban educators and program developers are considered.
This paper describes two computer-based learning environments, Rappin' Reader and Say Say Oh Playmate, that use the prior knowledge African-American children bring to classrooms as scaffolds for early literacy instruction. The study reports the results of using Rappin' Reader and Say Say Oh Playmate with low-SES African-American first- through fourth-grade students attending after-school tutoring/mentoring programs. This study seeks to investigate the benefits of using culturally responsive reading material and a computer-based learning environment in literacy instruction.
This article has three objectives. First, it describes Ogbu's classification of minorities: autonomous, voluntary or immigrant, and involuntary or nonimmigrant minorities. Second, it explains Ogbu's cultural-ecological theory of minority school performance. Finally, it suggests some implications of the theory for pedagogy. The authors regard the typology of minority groups as a heuristic device for analysis and interpretation of differences among minority groups in school experience.
One of the most serious problems facing the post-revolutionary Indonesian political élite has turned out to be the maintenance of mutual understanding between themselves and the mass of the peasant population. The attempt to build up a modern national state out of a plurality of distinct regional cultures has been hampered by the difficulty of communication between people still largely absorbed in those cultures and the metropolitan-based nationalist leadership more oriented to the international patterns of intelligentsia culture common to ruling groups in all the new Bandung countries. On the one hand, the activist white-collar nationalists of the large cities are attempting to construct an integrated Indonesian state along generally western parliamentary lines; on the other, the peasants of the Javanese, Sundanese, Achenese, Buginese, etc. culture areas cling to the patterns of local community organization and belief with which they are intimately familiar.
In this ethnographic account of mathematical activity among the Juruna, Kayabi, and Suya of central Brazil, I show how arithmetic practices are fashioned in a specific social setting. Values and symbolic properties of both the gift exchange and capitalist economics structure arithmetic dilemmas in the Xingu Indian Park. Within a broad social field that transcends the boundaries of the park to include prospecting sites and cattle ranches, economic calculations are extended to all kinds of goods, both material and symbolic. The distribution and circulation of these different forms of capital are discussed in view of the constitution of particular arenas of exchange. Practice theories highlight the ways in which mathematical knowledge is constituted in everyday activities, challenging functional assumptions about cognition and schooling. By articulating principles of the gift with those of capitalist exchange, mathematics is construed by the juruna, Kayabi, and Suyá as a product of social work and symbolic fashioning.
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
Using a newly available data set, which allows one to construct a novel measure of a student's social status, we demonstrate that there are potentially important racial differences in the relationship between social status and academic achievement. The effect is concentrated among students with a grade point average (GPA) of 3.5 or higher and more pronounced in schools with more interracial contact. Earlier studies showing a positive relationship between popularity and academic achievement for blacks are sensitive to the inclusion of more continuous achievement measures. We argue that the data are most consistent with a model of 'acting white' in which investments in education are taken as a signal of one's opportunity costs of peer-group loyalty, though imprecise estimates make definitive conclusions difficult.
This paper provides a survey on studies that analyze the macroeconomic effects of intellectual property rights (IPR). The first part of this paper introduces different patent policy instruments and reviews their effects on R&D and economic growth. This part also discusses the distortionary effects and distributional consequences of IPR protection as well as empirical evidence on the effects of patent rights. Then, the second part considers the international aspects of IPR protection. In summary, this paper draws the following conclusions from the literature. Firstly, different patent policy instruments have different effects on R&D and growth. Secondly, there is empirical evidence supporting a positive relationship between IPR protection and innovation, but the evidence is stronger for developed countries than for developing countries. Thirdly, the optimal level of IPR protection should tradeoff the social benefits of enhanced innovation against the social costs of multiple distortions and income inequality. Finally, in an open economy, achieving the globally optimal level of protection requires an international coordination (rather than the harmonization) of IPR protection.
An Analysis of Some Unintended and Negative Consequences of HighStakes Testing. Tempe: Education Policy Research Unit, Education Policy Studies Laboratory
- Audery L Amrein
- David C Berliner
Amrein, Audery L., and David C. Berliner. 2002. An Analysis of Some Unintended and Negative Consequences of HighStakes Testing. Tempe: Education Policy Research Unit, Education Policy Studies Laboratory, College of Education,
Division of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, Arizona State University.