Translanguaging Toward More Expansive Computing Education: Reflections From a Professional Learning Community

• In Event: Reimagining Disciplinary Learning Through Expansive Approaches Toward Language in STEM

Abstract

Objectives: Calls to go beyond assimilative, “broadening participation” logics for STEM education in the United States aim to empower marginalized groups and transform disciplines (Vakil & Higgs, 2019; Barton, 1998). Orienting STEM teaching and learning around students’ diverse epistemologies (Bang & Medin, 2010), and languaging (Author, 2020) may not just provide opportunities for students to participate in STEM, but can also expand what counts as disciplinary learning (Suárez, 2020). But supporting teachers to encourage students to use language in diverse ways and to embrace heterogeneous approaches to STEM requires surmounting great challenges. STEM teachers must cover specific subject-area content, and are largely prepared in discipline-specific ways (Gutiérrez, 2017; Molebash et al., 2019). This paper shares findings from a professional learning community (PLC) of 20 K-12 computer science (CS) teachers from New York City and San Francisco public schools. University researchers challenged teachers to take up an approach to curriculum design that began with emergent bi/multilingual students’ translanguaging practices and aimed to start “syncretic computational conversations.” In this paper, we consider: What were the motivations and/or agendas of the teachers in joining the PLC? How did teachers operationalize these in design? In what ways, if at all, did teachers take up translanguaging and syncretic literacies to support bi/multilingual learners in computing contexts?

Theoretical Framework: PLC teachers were invited to design units around their students’ funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 2005) and translanguaging -- how students deploy their whole language repertoires, including in ways that transgress school-sanctioned language categories (e.g. Standard English) (García & Li Wei, 2014). Teachers were also asked to foster syncretic literacies, the juxtaposition of language and literacy practices seen as incompatible or in tension (Gutiérrez, 2014). While Gutiérrez’ conception focuses on reorganizing disciplinary vs everyday literacies, our PLC supported teachers to identify opportunities to juxtapose literacies from home and community, school subjects, and computing.

Methods and Data: During Summer 2021, teachers attended a weekly virtual workshop sharing our approach to design. They worked with fellow teachers, interns, and researchers to generate curricula. Data sources include teachers’ designed artifacts (units, lessons, design journals) and an hour-long introductory interview. Workshops and teachers’ video reflections were recorded and transcribed.

Results: Preliminary analysis of similar workshops from last year guides our grounded analysis, though we will remain open to new themes as well as revision and refinement of preliminary themes (Corbin & Strauss, 1990). Previous themes included teachers’ varying definitions of equity, negotiation of translanguaging vis a vis “code-switching”, standard language, and disciplines, and the challenges of centering students in syncretic unit design. In Fall 2021, we will identify additional themes and analyze artifacts to understand how teachers operationalized translanguaging and syncretic literacies.

Significance: Designing for equity is a process. We do not yet know what “progress” looks like as teachers shift their understandings in real-time. This work sheds light on teacher motivations and ways of planning so we might understand how teachers learn towards more heterogeneous STEM pedagogies, answering this year’s AERA call to cultivate equitable educational systems.

Authors

• Sara Vogel, City University of New York

• Wendy Barrales, Graduate Center - CUNY

• Laura Ascenzi-Moreno, Brooklyn College - CUNY

• Christopher Hoadley, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Jasmine Y. Ma, New York University