Digital Youth Divas: Orienting E-Textiles in Individual Learning Pathways

• In Event: 34.079 - Interactive Stitch Sampler of Equitable Learning and Teaching With E-Textiles in K–12 Education

Abstract

OBJECTIVE. To address persistent inequities in STEM learning opportunities and participation (US Civil Rights Data Collection, 2014; Pinkard et al., 2016), the Digital Youth Divas (DYD) program was established in 2013 to engage middle school girls around Chicago with introductory circuitry and programming through design projects, including e-textiles. The free program recruits girls from communities underrepresented in CS and engineering, especially those who do not consider themselves interested in computing. E-textile projects are a critical component of the program allowing youth to personalize designs and engage in computational work using non-traditional materials (e.g. Kafai, Fields & Searle, 2014). Other interconnected program components include a community of learners including adult mentors and collaborative peers; an online social learning platform where girls access project instructions and other learning resources, develop a portfolio of submitted work, and interact with others around projects; and alternative instructional resources including narrative stories (Pinkard et al., 2017).
PERSPECTIVES. In this work we take a learning ecologies perspective (Barron, 2006) to better conceptualize and understand how the program and e-textiles activities were positioned in a learner’s physical and social environment (including people, places, resources and opportunities) and along a temporal dimension (history of participation and ideas for the future). Focal research questions include: (1) What barriers, supports, and affordances impact girls’ work with e-textiles in and outside of the program? (2) How do learners conceptualize next steps in their learning pathway (or do they)?
METHODS & DATA. We describe results from two levels of analysis. The first is at the level of all participants during a 20-week DYD implementation (N = 98 middle school girls) using data from pre- and post-surveys (experience, interest, identity, Barron et al., 2014). The second is a deeper look at four case study learners from the focal cohort who attended the program again the following year, including interview data, artifact collection, and fieldnotes from online and face-to-face spaces.
FINDINGS. Analysis is ongoing, but initial findings include barriers of consistent attendance in out-of-school time learning opportunities and competition from other programs that may represent other parts of a young person’s identity. The online space allows girls to catch up and was critical for sharing projects with others who could potentially connect learners to new opportunities, including teachers and parents. Non-technical practices (such as stitching and fashion design) found support at home from mothers, fathers, and grandmothers. In some cases, this connection led to new collaborations and intergenerational learning, where the girl was more expert in required technical work. We also found that although program participants generated creative ideas about future e-textile project possibilities, there was a need for more support to identify concrete next steps for learners, from where to buy resources for independent projects to where to level up their skills in e-textiles and related work.
SIGNIFICANCE. Better understanding how to situate e-textile projects and similar non-traditional engineering and computing opportunities within wider contexts of young people’s broader learning ecologies could strengthen sustained participation and advancement, especially for learners without visible pathways in these fields.

Authors

• Nichole Pinkard, Northwestern University

• Caitlin Kennedy Martin, CK Martin Consulting

• Sheena Erete, DePaul University