We Code for Joy and Hope: Centering Critical Computational Expression as a Framework for Liberation

• In Event: Toward Decolonial Classrooms and Learning: Disrupting Dominant and Normative Practices of Language, Literacies, and Culture

Abstract

Objectives:
Over the past three decades, countless scholars have acknowledged, demonstrated, and incorporated the significance of youth’s rich multiliteracies traditions into various learning ecologies (Cazden et al., 1996; Mirra, Morrell, Filipiak, 2018). But what about the new social media, digital, and computational literacies? How has the long-standing traditions of white supremacy, patriarchy, heteronormativity, and capitalistic exploitation reified in these new literacies? This paper describes the use of critical computational expression as a conceptual and pedagogical framework to engage and empower youth in the cultivation of learning spaces where majority BIPOC youth collaboratively create sophisticated computational tools for public audiences that challenge multiple levels of oppression.

Theoretical Framework:
Combining the three distinct traditions of: critical pedagogy, computational thinking, and creative expression, the critical computational expression framework synthesizes how we structure our learning space as well as the lens with which we examine our data. It elevates the non-hierarchical, humanizing teacher-student relationships in developing the critical consciousness and subsequent liberation by utilizing praxis from critical pedagogy (Freire, 1996), while emphasizing the four steps of problem-solving with computers: 1) decomposing a problem (breaking down into smaller parts), 2) recognizing patterns, 3) applying general principles, and 4) designing algorithms from computational thinking (Wing, 2008), and nurturing space for learners to feel, notice, observe, reflect, and represent their feelings, thoughts, and identities through words, movement, and the products they create in creative expression. We honor traditions of making and expressing the self and culture rooted in marginalized communities that foster habits of healthy risk-taking while aligning with efforts to advance social justice.

Methods:
Utilizing an ethnographic and participatory research tradition, the author of this paper is at times a co-curriculum designer, teacher, editor, and interviewer. Informed by Gutiérrez’s model for Social Design-Based Experiments (2018), I draw from these live participant observations as well as semi-structured interviews and focus groups, and analysis of learning artifacts and media products utilizing a grounded theory approach. This study focuses on youth ages fourteen to twenty-four years-old, housed within an after school, media production organization. Most of the participants are from communities underrepresented in STEM: Black, Latinx, and self-identified female and non-binary learners.

Findings and Scholarly Significance:
Findings suggest that a learning environment conducive to collegial pedagogy (Chavez & Soep; 2005) and culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris, 2012) allows youth learners to critically examine taken-for-granted technologies as a critical first-step in demystifying complex computational products of black-boxed algorithms and artificial intelligence. By harnessing an ethics-centered curriculum and pedagogy, youth were empowered to take action in producing media and digital tools to educate others by challenging traditional epistemologies and see themselves as critical digital inventors and knowledge producers. This paper pushes the boundaries of the Code for All movement by asking Code for What? What are we creating and for whom? And for what purpose? How are these tools used to reproduce social inequalities? How can youth remix/repurpose them for justice and in elevating the dispossessed voices of people who may not typically have access to these tools?

Author

• Clifford H. Lee, Northeastern University