Translanguaging as a Frame for More Equitable Computer Science Learning

• In Event: 47.027 - CS for All: An Intersectional Approach to Unpacking Equity in Computer Science Education

Abstract

One of the great challenges in the goals of “CS for All” is conceptualizing what the inclusiveness implied by “All” means. Our project uses the concept of translanguaging (García & Li Wei, 2014) both as an explanatory framework to understand how learners leverage their linguistic resources into new activities such as reading and writing computer code, and as a pedagogical framework to support a diversity of learners’ linguistic backgrounds. In this poster, we describe challenges for including learners who are emergent bilinguals in the CS for All movement, and ways our approach to inclusion addresses these, and might apply to monolingual learners as well.

Traditionally, learners who are linguistic minorities are marginalized by schooling. Emergent bilinguals make up a significant portion of the school population nationally and especially in New York City where 41% of students speak a language other than English at home (Office of English Language Learners, 2013). Translanguaging pedagogy, an outgrowth of translanguaging theory, is a framework for supporting learners to leverage the breadth of their linguistic resources (García, Johnson, & Seltzer, 2017).

Our project uses translanguaging pedagogy and a technique from computer science, literate programming (Knuth, 1984), to support CS Education in bilingual New York City middle schools. In line with the translanguaging pedagogy approach, rather than creating a “Spanish CS” and an “English CS” curriculum, our project works with teachers to co-design units that can draw on and utilize students’ diverse linguistic backgrounds. Teachers and researchers create units that use the multilingual Scratch programming language, resources in English, Spanish, and other languages, and other communicative resources to help incorporate computing in their school subjects.  We present data from one bilingual Language Arts classroom in which students wrote software simulating interviewing a character in a story; both the characters and the interviewers could use whatever language was appropriate. In several cases, this led to students collaborating and peer teaching using a variety of translanguaging strategies including drawing on multiple named languages, gestures, drawings, and the code itself.

In developing approaches to build on the variety of linguistic resources students bring to their learning, we incorporate the perspective of Gutiérrez and Rogoff (2003) which cautions against seeing diversity as simply demographic, while not respecting the individual histories learners bring. In our setting, emergent bilingual students are not monolithic. They vary in terms of their age, race, genders, schooling histories, and immigration experiences. Some have experience reading and writing the standard named languages of school, others may be more comfortable using oral varieties common to their communities or home countries. By creating opportunities for students learning to code to bring their strengths in language -- whatever those strengths are -- we hope to build a more inclusive model for computer science education. Also, we have seen emergent bilinguals translanguage not only using English and Spanish words, but also using other semiotic resources such as code blocks, keywords and gesture to express themselves. This suggests even monolingual students may benefit from our approach.

Authors

• Christopher Hoadley, New York University

• Sara Vogel, Graduate Center, City University of New York

• Laura Ascenzi-Moreno, Brooklyn College - CUNY

• Kate Menken, Queens College and Graduate Center, City University of New York