Employing Critical Race, Abolitionist Pedagogies in Computer Science Education: Learning From the Voices, Insights, and Technological Innovations of Black Youth

• In Event: Saturday Roundtable Session 9:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Momentum and Change: An Exploration of Schools and Youth Systemically Employing Critical Race Theory (Table 16)

Abstract

This paper highlights the experiences of 3 cohorts (n=40) of Black high school students who participated in a “Race, Abolition and AI” course. The goal of the course was to prepare students to critically examine the ubiquity of anti-Black racism within socio-technical infrastructures (e.g. code, data, algorithms, etc.) of digital and artificially intelligent technologies. As a final assignment, students worked collaboratively to design race-conscious and algorithmically-just technologies that could protect and sustain Communities of Color. In addition to showcasing how Black students (re)design anti-black technologies for Black hope, healing and futurity, this paper also documents how a critical race, abolitionist pedagogy in CS prompted students to develop a new type of computational thinking: critical race computational thinking.

Author

• Tiera C. Tanksley, University of Colorado - Boulder