Bilingual Students Leading Bilingual Computational Thinking Collaborative Practices: A Rigorous Systemic Functional Linguistics Approach

• In Event: Multilingual and Multicultural Computer Science and Engineering Education

Abstract

Discourse used by facilitators is fundamental in providing culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students with opportunities to develop computational thinking through computer programming (CT-CP). Drawing on systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and situated learning, we illustrate how a group of CLD novice students of CT-CP, their language arts teacher (novice), and facilitator collaborated to program a digital video representation in Python. Data sources included video clips of group interactions, student-developed code, and student artifacts. Our findings indicate that 1) Encouraging the students to use Spanish and English freely in a motivational and collaborative environment can induce them to take on leading positions in CT-CP practices and develop CT-CP and 2) using SFL to analyze CT-CP educational contexts is a powerful resource.

Authors

• Jose Antonio Lecea, University of New Mexico
  Presenting Author

• Marios Pattichis, The University of New Mexico
  Presenting Author

• Sylvia Celedon-Pattichis, University of Texas at Austin
  Presenting Author