Situating Computing in Critical and Culturally Responsive Context: Bringing Together Indian Education for All and Computer Science in Montana (Poster 2)

• In Event: Design Principles for Creating Accessible and Inclusive Introductory Computing Experiences

Abstract

Computer science education researchers have long argued that providing students with a context for doing computing makes it more relevant to their lives and improves academic outcomes (Eglash, Gilbert, & Foster, 2013; Porter, Guzdial, & Simon, 2013). Integrating computing into core content areas (e.g. social studies) addresses both practical concerns about how to include computing in an already packed school day and ensures that all students are exposed to computer science. More recently, the Kapor Center’s Framework for culturally responsive-sustaining computer science education (2021) emphasizes the importance of not only valuing students’ interests, identities, and cultures, but also ensuring students are equipped with a critical perspective on how technology operates in our world. As such, a design principle that has guided our work is the importance of situating computing in context, by which we refer to disciplinary contexts, the contexts of students’ and teachers’ everyday lives, and larger sociopolitical contexts.
We report on a curriculum design and professional development project that brings together Montana’s Indian Education for All (IEFA) curriculum with more recent computer science standards for middle school students and teachers. In Montana, Indian Education For All grew out of a state legislative mandate (MCA 20-1-501) that requires all students in Montana to learn about the 12 tribes of Montana. It is centered around seven essential understandings regarding Montana Indians that are integrated into lessons across content areas. In our work, we focus on the status of tribes as sovereign nations and how, as sovereign nations, tribes entered into treaties with the United States government. Through these treaties, tribes ceded much of their land to the United States government in exchange for goods and services, which were frequently not delivered as promised. We utilize computing as a tool within the context of IEFA to help students and teachers understand tribal sovereignty and treaties, particularly through using computing to visualize historical data and to take sociopolitical action.
We share a three-week unit we have developed for middle school students around issues of tribal sovereignty and treaties in Montana, in collaboration with the Montana Office of Public Instruction and with input from both the Montana Advisory Council on Indian Education and a group of master teachers. We show how electronic textiles materials, which consist of a small, sewable microcontroller and a variety of sensors and actuators that are combined with elements of fabric craft, and app design can help to situate tribal sovereignty and treaties in disciplinary, personally meaningful, and larger sociopolitical contexts. We will provide opportunities for session attendees to explore data visualization with e-textiles materials and app design.

Authors

• Kristin A. Searle, Utah State University
  Presenting Author

• Colby Tofel-Grehl, Utah State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Aubrey Rogowski, Utah State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Mengying Jiang, Utah State University
  Non-Presenting Author