Created News Spaces of Critical Witnessing/Transformation Toward a More Rightful Presence in Computer Science and the World

• In Event: Dis/Connecting With Computing: Designing for Critical Identities and Equitable Inquiry in K–12 Computer Science Education

Abstract

Objectives: This paper explores how youth of color from low-income communities engage in computer science (CS) in two informal, STEM-rich making clubs. We attend to when/how youth move/co-opt what they are learning in CS to amplify their lives/concerns in their maker work, and how this impacts their identities as makers. Given that the cultural/structural regularities of both CS and makerspaces marginalize youth lives, understanding how and why youth engage CS in these ways, and how they are supported in doing so, is an important and timely justice-oriented issue.

Research Questions: When, how and why do middle-school-aged youth in two community-based STEM-rich makerspaces integrate CS into their maker projects? How does this integration create supporting spaces for youth to make visible, and present, their emerging identities as maker-coders?

Framework: We draw on a rightful presence framework (Squire & Darling, 2013), centered on making-present practices—that which make visible what was previously missing (Calabrese Barton & Tan, 2019). We unpack how historically marginalized youth of color author a rightful presence in CS, focusing on both coding process and their made artifacts (e.g., movies and games on Scratch, Python, and Ozobots programming). The rightful presence lens is complemented by a focus on youths’ identity work (Tan et al., 2013) where youths’ performed identities and narrated identities collectively inform what kind of maker-coder youth are becoming.

Methods/Data: We engaged in longitudinal critical ethnography across two community-based making spaces serving predominantly Black youth from lower-income neighborhoods. Data include fieldnotes, videos of select sessions, interviews and youth-produced artifacts. We report on two in-depth nested cases where youth worked weekly on coding projects (90-150 minutes/week) for up to 9 months.

Results: Two illustrative nested cases show how youth drew upon community wisdom (Yosso, 2005) and their embodied experiences with systemic and historicized injustices, to engage in CS. These experiences were integral to how youth engaged in two making-present practices that impacted their evolving identity work as maker-coders. In the first case, youth worked to “teach a computer to speak testimonies of what makes [Green Club] a welcoming and non-judgmental space where we do science that matters” as an interactive experience for visitors who first step into Green Club. This making-present practice hybridizes community wealth with CS how-to in creating a uniquely community-oriented artifact that works to further amplify community STEM values. A second case illustrates another making-present practice: Creating spaces for increased recognition and witnessing of youths’ community wealth and CS skills. Youth moved CS artifacts into different spaces and shared those artifacts as community CS teachers to community members. Implications for youths’ identity work as maker-coders are considered, with a focus on the role making-present practices play.

Significance: This study highlights the relationalities between youths’ lived lives in community and their emerging identities/expertise in CS. Investigating youths’ making-present practices and identity work in CS in communities make visible the community resources necessary for youths’ growth in CS expertise and the community stakeholders who could support youths’ continued identity work as maker-coders in contextually-responsive ways.

Authors

• Angela Calabrese Barton, University of Michigan

• Edna Tan, University of North Carolina at Greensboro