Building Culturally Relevant Educational Policies for CT-STEM Disciplines and Thinking Practices: A Conceptual Review

• In Event: Searching for Identity: (Re)Imagining Culturally Relevant and Equitable STEM Practices and Counter-Spaces

Abstract

The intellectual union of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), as well as the most recent addition of Computing Thinking; has produced a symbolic, euphemism within social and educational spaces, coined as CT-STEM Education (Cooper, Bookey, and Gruenbaum, 2014; Weintrop, et al., 2016; Yang, Swanson, and Baek, 2018). Its aim has been to highlight the cognitive and social practices considered most relevant, within the educational and social spaces empowered historically and culturally by these disciplines. In response, educational policies and initiatives have aimed to illustrate the significance of insistent scaffolding and practice of these computational and systematic ways of thinking; specifically within everyday CT-STEM learning contexts and environments (Wing, 2008; 2016; Bocconi, Stefania, et al., 2016; Hsu, Irie & Ching, 2019). The success of these policies and initiatives has paralleled the academic and historic narratives and notions used to define the identities, knowledge, and practices considered most symbolic and relevant, to the development and practice of these disciplines. Historically, these disciplines have further empowered and advanced the racial, social, and cultural tensions transcendent to the experiences of generations of learners and administrators; novices and experts; and inquirers and theorizers. Additionally, research has shown that these narratives and perspectives fail to highlight or suppress the cultural and historical practices, identities, and knowledge of students of color (SoC), and other students considered underrepresented within these CT-STEM communities.
As such, the construction and establishment of these inequitable realities, narratives, and spaces, specifically in everyday educational contexts, has directly contributed to a deficit-centered orientation towards SoC success and development of identity; within the very historical fabric that has supplemented these computational thinking practices. As such, to inquire into these educational contexts further, specifically those that inhabit Higher Education spaces: this session will explore the CT-STEM policies and initiatives considered most established within American postsecondary schooling, for culturally-relevant and equity-centered frameworks, perspectives, and cultures of learning. Dependent on the findings of this conceptual review, the session will provide guidance and structure, as well as culturally and cognitively relevant theories, that empower the success of students of color. Furthermore, this session will encourage educational responsibility and positionality, by being critical of the educational and social notions that currently occupy and colonize the computational ways of thinking and educational contexts these policies exemplify. Instead, it is the goal of this session to communicate culturally-relevant and responsive perspectives, that address the ways-of-knowing and identity-building that students rely on to solve problems and think computationally, in everyday learning contexts. Within the socio-political domains and stoicism that drive these CT-STEM educational policies and disciplines--this session will provide historically and culturally divergent viewpoints for postsecondary educators and administrators to consider. Viewpoints that when engaged with, could purposefully inspire and ensure the persistence, confidence, and success of SoC in CT-STEM disciplines and postsecondary learning contexts.

Author

• Nayah Boucaud, Indiana University - Bloomington