"You're So Far Out, and You're Trying to Look In": Exploring Politicized Trust in a Racially Diverse Computer Science Classroom

• In Event: 79.019 - Disrupting "Truth": Theorizing the Cultural Politics of STEM Education Through a Plurality of Perspectives

Abstract

Over the past decade, a broad range of policy makers, corporations, educators, and scholars in the United States have catapulted computer science (CS) education from the sidelines to the center of K-12 public education discourse. This shift has been precipitated by calls for CS education for all as a matter of national and economic competitiveness and to address issues of equity for youth that have been historically excluded from this domain such as girls and racially minoritized students (Smith, 2016). In evoking a rhetoric of addressing racial and social inequities, advocates argue that CS education is increasingly vital for youth’s full participation in today’s cultural, economic, and even political processes. Unclear, however, is how CS education can move beyond neoliberal conceptions of "equity" of access, inclusion, and diversity towards conceptualizing equity in ways that consider the relational power dynamics within learning environments and that value the importance of developing the sociopolitical consciousness and agency of minoritized youth to engage in the complex ethical and sociopolitical issues surrounding CS and its role in society.

In an attempt to better understand the relational power dynamics in CS classrooms and their implications for student experiences, our study investigates the following research question: How do inter-racial student relationships mediate classroom interactions and student experiences in the context of an equity-oriented CS learning environment? We present findings from a study of an equity-oriented curriculum unit designed and implemented in a 10th grade computer science classroom in a large urban high school in the San Francisco Bay Area. The goal of the unit was to engage students in identifying educational equity issues in their school, designing technologies that addressed those inequities, and reflecting on their subsequent designs. Drawing upon video data of a particular episode from the class, we examine the nature of student relationships in an episode of conflict that arose during student presentations about social justice topics in their school. We argue that this conflict between a white male student and a Black female student was rooted in a lack of trust and solidarity between the students. The conflict resulted in missed opportunities for collective learning and action, and more critically, led to the Black student and other students of color in the class experiencing discomfort and feeling violated. Drawing upon a recently developed construct we call politicized trust (Author 7, Author 8 & Colleagues, 2016), this article challenges STEM education generally and equity-oriented CS education in particular, to prioritize student relationships in the design and actualization of all learning environments. Adapting the concept to examine student relationships in classrooms, we argue that dynamics of race and power mediate student relationships, particularly so in racially diverse classrooms. We argue that cultivating (through careful design of learning environments) positive student relationships rooted in trust and solidarity between students is not only critical for expansive forms of collective learning (Engeström, 2001), and essential for the development of democratic learning communities (Author 5, 2014), but also an ethical responsibility of educators and researchers.

Authors

• Sepehr Vakil, Northwestern University

• Maxine McKinney de Royston, University of Wisconsin - Madison