"I Would Call This Slow Computer": Fiber Crafts as Tangible Computational Manipulatives

• In Event: Making the Future: Addressing Critiques, Transitions, and New Challenges in Maker Education

Abstract

Objectives and perspectives: Computer science (CS) education continues to face a strong underrepresentation of women also due to little early exposure (Sax et al., 2016). Tangible manipulatives can make computational concepts available to beginners but are often designed based on blocks and bricks (Bers, 2017; Resnick et al., 2000). These materials are associated with male practices (Fulcher & Hayes, 2018). Materials associated with women’s work, such as weaving and manipulating fabric (Smith, 2014), are underrepresented in CS education although they are precursors of earliest computers (Essinger, 2007) and contexts of imagining new computational futures (Fernaeus et al., 2012). Building on constructionist (Papert, 1980) and makerspaces scholarship (Authors, 2019) that highlight material diversity for equitable learning, this qualitative study asked: How does weaving and manipulating fabric support the engagement with computation concepts that are typically challenging to learn?
Methods and data: This study facilitated artifact analysis sessions (60 minutes each) with 12 instructors of introductory CS courses at three research-focused universities. Participants were asked about their teaching experience, introduced to craft techniques, identified computational concepts in projects that middle school students created in a fiber craft course. The session transcripts were iteratively coded for challenging CS concepts and how crafts can support them, including translating the craft projects into pseudo code.
Findings: Results identified algorithms, variables, control structures (e.g., loops), modularity, and troubleshooting as challenging computational concepts. The participants recognized weaving and fabric manipulation as matrix-based crafts that require all of these concepts. Experts described the use of (1) algorithms as matrix-based artifact transformation, (2) variables as processing data with material parts, (3) loops as performing programs, (4) modularity as variations of pattern similarities, and (5) troubleshooting as re-tracing history. While the poster will share details on all concepts, one compelling example is the use of loops. In weaving, youth paired heddle positions with yarn directions by moving yarn through warp threads. Participants considered this a conditional statement: If the heddle was lifted (i.e., heddle == 1), the youth wove from left to right (i.e., start at warp 1 28 to right). If the heddle was down (heddle == -1), the youth wove from right to left (i.e., start at warp 28 28 to left). Participants described this repetition as a while-loop that took the amount of rows as input variable. In fabric manipulation, experts considered the folds that were produced as youth sewed 2-dimensional patterns into 3-dimensional shapes by stitching matrix points together as “slow computer”. In the process, matrix points folded onto each other, which participants recognized as a fold function that combines elements in a recursive data structure.

Significance: This work has implications for the design of tangible computational manipulatives for disciplinary making, suggesting that fiber crafts can turn computing into a matrix-based artifact transformation process that makes invisible computational processes tangible. Designing for matrix-play can unravel computational automation and challenge prominent notions about how computation is performed and by whom.

Authors

• Anna Keune, Institute of Education - Ruhr-Universität Bochum

• Kylie A. Peppler, University of California - Irvine