Thinking Through Epistemology, Ethics, and Relationality in Computer Science Education: Reflections From the Technology, Race, Ethics, and Equity in Education (TREE) Lab

• In Event: Epistemic Justice Across Learning Environments

Abstract

Scholars in computer science (CS) education have argued that projects such as #CSForAll advance a technocentric view of computing (Margolis & Goode, 2016; Sengupta et al., 2021). What it means to learn about and with technology, through the paradigmatic lenses of CS education, prioritizes mastery of technologies and their associated epistemic foundations (Vakil & McKinney de Royston, 2022). In recent years, there has been an uptick in STEM education and learning sciences scholarship that takes up philosophical questions of relationality, ontology, and epistemology. Our research collective, the Technology, Race, Ethics, and Equity in Education (TREE) Lab, takes inspiration from these perspectives in our design and research of environments that seek to cultivate ethical, critical, and philosophical understanding of computationally-mediated technologies.
In this paper, we draw on data across our constellation of research projects to present a case study of our recently formed lab, wherein we analyze the “messy work” (Cheuk & Morales-Doyle, 2022) of a collaborative project that aims to cultivate epistemically-just learning environments in CS + STEM. We take inspiration from Sengupta & colleagues’ critical phenomenological theories of computational thinking (2018; 2021), to critically examine how notions of epistemology, ethics, and relationality are conceptualized and enacted across our learning ecology. Ultimately, our case study of the TREE Lab advances our knowledge of why and how attending to ethics, epistemology, and relationality are foundational for justice-oriented projects in CS education (Vakil, 2018).

Research across STEM education has begun to orient toward justice-centered learning environments. For example, participatory and community-based design methods (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016) and co-design (Stroupe, et al., 2018; Gutiérrez, et al., 2020) continue to push the learning sciences beyond dominant and normative visions of STEM learning. Joining this shift, in this paper we seek to illuminate how questions of justice and power within computing learning contexts are linked to processes of design and to underlying philosophical foundations of knowledge and ethics. We describe how our TREE Lab brings forth what Sengupta and colleagues (2022) call “computational counter-models.” This includes artistic counter-models of youth-created documentary films (Vakil et al., 2022; Vakil & McKinney de Royston, 2022), pedagogical counter-models through the co-creation of curricula led by youth, and relational counter-models in an exploration of digital platforms’ data collection (Melo et al., 2022).

Emerging findings from our case study point toward what we view as an axiological shift (Sengupta, et al., 2021) in what is valued in computer science education—a shift that brings into focus the embodied, discursive, and felt conditions of learning environments, in constant process of reassemblage (Smirnov, 2020). We contend that this shift advances learning that is epistemically-just, where learners are positioned and celebrated as creators of knowledge.
A power-conscious orientation to computer science and CS education helps us imagine “computational counter-models” (Sengupta, et al., 2022) that resist anti-Black, colonial, classist, abelist, queer- and transphobic narratives and lineages (Jones & Melo, 2020; 2021; Scott et al., 2022), toward the design and study of learning experiences that are dignity-conferring and support learners’ epistemic agency (Keifert et al., 2021).

Authors

• Alisa Reith, Northwestern University
  Presenting Author

• Natalie Araujo Melo, Northwestern University
  Presenting Author

• Sepehr Vakil, Northwestern University
  Presenting Author

• Allison Scott, Kapor Center for Social Impact
  Non-Presenting Author

• Shana Vidal White, Kapor Center
  Non-Presenting Author