Using Culturally Sustaining STEM+C Learning Environments to Explore Computational Learning and Identity

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

Abstract

Objective: This project aimed to create learning spaces that reimagined hip-hop and STEM+C cultures in order to call attention to the intersections of STEM+C and hip-hop. We looked to highlight how these intersections are part of, contribute to, and disrupt powered social ecosystems with the goal of supporting young people as they remake the world. To do this, we created a model for what we are calling a “hip-hop makerspace” that highlights the five elements of hip-hop (i.e., MCing, DJing, b-boying, graffiti, & knowledge of self) as they relate to STEM+C topics. In this poster, we discuss the design process and emergent design principles for creating the model for a multi-site hip-hop makerspace.

Framework: This work is informed by a framework of culturally sustaining pedagogies and hip-hop based education. We argue that learning and identity development happen through human social ecologies and that these human social ecologies constitute culture. Culturally sustaining pedagogy is a means to incorporate the human social ecologies that shape the lives and understandings of contemporary young people. “Culturally sustaining pedagogy seeks to perpetuate and foster—to sustain—linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of the democratic project of schooling and as a needed response to demographic and social change” (Paris & Alim, 2014, p. 88). In this research, we conceptualize hip-hop pedagogy as a means for actualizing culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris, 2012). Here, hip-hop is viewed as more than a music genre, but as a cultural movement that has the potential to raise student consciousness (Emdin, 2013; Paul, 2000) and incorporated into learning spaces to engage young people (Covington, Allen, & Lewis, 2016). Leveraging hip-hop for learning computational making practices situates young people’s “dynamic cultural dexterity as a necessary good, and sees the outcome of learning as additive rather than subtractive” (Alim & Paris, 2017, p. 1).

Methods. As part of the design process (Barab, 2006; Brown, 1992; Cobb et al., 2003), we engaged focus groups (n=10) of young people in two large urban cities about how they define “hip-hop,” and separately, how they define STEM. An open coding approach was utilized to identify themes for how young people conceptualized hip-hop and STEM. Next, a process of axial coding, or breaking down and comparing the themes across these two topics, was utilized in order to translate themes into design principles that informed the construction of STEM+C activities within 60-hours of programming at each site.

Results and Significance. The design principles developed from focus group conversations included: (a) interactivity (improvisation, play, making do), (b) expressions of self and truth, (c) our space / my space, or young people’s “rightful presence” in the spaces, and (d) breaking down / building up. These design principles were then translated into a series of activities that were connected through into questions such as, “Can you teach or program a computer to freestyle?” This poster presentation details the process of translation; the tensions with integrating hip-hop and STEM+C; possibilities for new learning spaces; and questions that still remain.

Authors

• Christopher George Wright, Drexel University

• Dionne N Champion, University of Florida

• Eli Tucker-Raymond, Boston University

• Brian E. Gravel, Tufts University

• Amon D. Millner, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering

• Ayana Allen-Handy, Drexel University

• Rasheda Likely, Kennesaw State University