Tools of Change: Using Critical Computational Literacy for Interactive App Development

• In Event: 41.084 - Roundtable Session 16
  In Roundtable Session: 41.084-5 - Multilingual and Multicultural Resources in Technology-Mediated Engagements: Exploring and Supporting the Digital Literacies of Nondominant Students and Families

Abstract

The third paper in this symposium demonstrates how the tenets of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim, 2014) are incorporated and developed while engaging youth in the creation, production, reflection, and dissemination of interactive apps (maps, games, data visualization). In our multilingual and multiethnic classrooms, educators must leverage the widespread use of technologies, while conscious of the historical and communal traditions and practices of urban youth of color. Housed within a nationally recognized, award-winning multimedia organization, urban youth of color worked with adult staff in an after-school program to develop these interactive apps.

Critical Computational Literacy (Lee & Garcia, 2014), the intersection of reading and producing multimodal “critical texts” while using high-level computational thinking practices including: design aesthetics; systems thinking; coding; and app-development, is readily seen in the production of these artifacts. In our ubiquitously connected world, multiliteracies have ceremoniously become the literacy de rigueur (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009; Kress, 2010; Luke, 2000). This paper examines the learning processes youth engaged in through their construction of interactive apps for public dissemination. Conceptually, this research draws from critical literacy (Luke, 1995; Morrell, 2015; Shor, 1999), multiliteracies (Ito et. al, 2013; Leander & Boldt, 2013; New London Group, 1996), and sociocultural learning theory (Lave & Wenger, 1991).

This study examined two ten-week sessions (2014-15) where urban youth brainstormed, created, and reflected on their various multimodal products. Using embedded ethnographic methods, data was collected through field notes, analytic memos, youth-produced artifacts (reflections, drawings, apps), audio-recorded discussions and conversations, and one-on-one interviews at the conclusion of the project. Data analysis began with students’ final reflections and transcribed interviews through a grounded theory approach. Data were coded in relation to themes generated from student interviews, analytical memos, and reflections.

Findings from this research demonstrate that historically marginalized urban youth learned computational concepts and how to leverage these tools to tell stories that are rarely raised in the mainstream media. They challenged prevailing and dominant ideologies by changing the means by which audience members understand these topics through gamification in apps to expand and deepen their knowledge of an issue. Youth engaged in deep discussions to accurately represent complex and fluid real-world concepts and experiences. The implications of this work is multi-faceted. Although the singular focus on diversifying the field of technologists is laudable, a lack of emphasis for the purposes of these tools is deplorable. This study explores the possibilities of enriching and complementing the technical conditions of computational thinking with critical, sociopolitical examinations of issues in the communities of the students. Not only does it employ a culturally sustaining pedagogy in the teaching of these skills, but the tools reiterate the centrality of a critical perspective to their respective audiences.

Author

• Clifford H. Lee, Saint Mary's College of California