Restorying Black Girls’ Futures: Using Womanist Storytelling Methodologies to Reimagine Dominant Narratives in Computing Education (Poster 5)

• In Event: Designing for Racial Justice Through Speculative Pedagogies: Learning to Build Liberatory Futures

Abstract

Objectives: This study offers an innovative, pedagogical approach to support youth in making explicit connections between not only the personal, sociocultural, and political dimensions of computing, but also the speculative dimension regarding what computing and technologies could be in the future. Given the history of Black women and girls resisting narratives of misogynoir through the use of new media or digital technologies (e.g., Bailey, 2021), we saw potential for adopting Black womanist storytelling traditions in computing education to restory (Thomas and Stornaiuolo, 2016) narratives that value Black girls and their futures. Our research question was: How might womanist storytelling methods support one Black girl in restorying possible computing futures?

Framework: With theoretical roots in literacy studies (Thomas & Stornaiuolo, 2016; Stornaiuolo & Thomas, 2018), restorying as a design objective provides a speculative approach to computing education that supports youth in first deconstructing normalized narratives within computing, then reimagining those narratives through designing and programming computational artifacts. Building on race critical code studies (Benjamin, 2019) and identity-as-narrative theories (e.g., Sfard & Prusak, 2008), this study examined how one Black girl used restorying as a Black womanist storytelling methodologies to integrate her intersectional identities when redesigning her computing future. Honoring Black womanism and its rootedness in “Black women’s and other women of color’s everyday experiences and everyday methods of problem solving” (Phillips, 2006, p. xx), we drew from womanist storytelling methods—in particular, African-American women’s quiltmaking—to analyze one Black girls’ restorying practices.

Methods: In this presentation, we present a case focused on the restorying practices of one study participant, Heather, who identified as a Black girl. The case was situated within a larger workshop wherein marginalized youth reimagined dominant narratives about computer science (CS). They did so by creating interactive quilt patches using paper circuits and microcontrollers that challenged dominant narratives of white masculinity and misogynoir normalized throughout the field.

Results: We found that restorying based on womanist storytelling methods allowed Heather to (1) deconstruct narratives of white masculinity and anti-Black sexism throughout CS education by centering Black women’s ways of knowing and doing, and (2) restory the past to enact possible CS futures and identities through computing.

Significance: Most computing education studies aimed at increasing a sense of belonging in the field tend to analyze race and gender separately, thereby omitting the unique perspectives and needs of Black women and girls. These Black women and girls experience computing education at the intersection of racism and sexism—or misogynoir (Bailey & Trudy, 2018), and this experience results in distinct forms of oppression that necessitate an intersectional research lens (Evans-Winter & Esposito, 2010; Solomon, Moon, & Gilbert, 2018). Resultantly, Black girls’ capacities to imagine possible futures in computing are constrained by narratives of white masculinity and misogynoir embedded within the field and novel technologies. Understanding how Black girls restory through design can provide educators and researchers with a framework for supporting all youth in exploring the speculative dimensions of computing and challenging the dominant narratives within the field.

Authors

• Mia Shaw, New York University

• Josh Coleman, Arizona State University

• Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, University of Michigan

• Yasmin B. Kafai, University of Pennsylvania