Culturally Sustaining Assessment for Computational Thinking in the Early Grades

• In Event: Culturally Sustaining Approaches to Classroom Assessment

Abstract

Purpose. In recent years, computational thinking (CT) has become a focus for K-12 education, including early elementary grades. Not only does CT provide an entry point for computer science more broadly (Wing, 2006), but it also speaks to ways of approaching and resolving everyday problems that arise. Given the lack of diversity in computer science (CS), experiences of children from non-dominant families and communities must be interwoven with instructional and assessment opportunities, as too often they are not reflected in standard instruction and assessment (Author, 2021b). We see such efforts as contributing to culturally sustaining and anti-racist approaches to assessment development in CS to make it more inclusive and representative of the United States.
Children and their families engage in computational thinking (CT) in their everyday lives. Even if they are unaware of words like algorithm or conditional reasoning, K-2 children can easily describe the step-by-step process of preparing for school in the morning or how to get ready for dance class depending on rain or shine. Our research documents the ways in which young children from historically minoritized populations engage in everyday computational thinking (Author, 2021b). How might families’ everyday CT practices point to critical opportunities to weave together community funds of knowledge with formal computational thinking content?

Theoretical Framework. We apply a funds of knowledge (FoK) perspective that positions the experiences of minoritized children and families as rich with knowledge, history, and potential for integrating into classroom practices. An FoK perspective seeks to identify “historically accumulated bodies of knowledge and skills essential for household functioning and well-being” (Gonzalez, Andrade, Civil, & Moll, 2001, p. 116). With an FoK approach, assessments can become a tool to sustain the lifeways of historically marginalized communities and make explicit efforts to eschew a problematic history that places Whiteness as the default center of the assessment design process. Given CS trends indicating a lack of diversity, including women and BIPOC (Buolamwini, 2016; NCES, 2021, Noble, 2018), we apply FoK to illuminate the intersection of everyday knowledge with CT.

Methods and Data Sources. Anchored in a design research approach (Cobb, Confrey, diSessa, Lehrer, & Schauble, 2003), our team of university researchers and K-2 teachers engaged in three key phases: (1) Family Interviews; (2) Assessment Task Development; (3) Clinical Interviews. The focal classrooms and schools reflected the demographics of the city, which is primarily Hispanic (66.6% of students) and Black (18.9%). Throughout analysis, we used descriptions in data to generate a coding scheme grounded in the data (Strauss & Corbin, 1994).

Results and Significance. Our analysis identified family experiences related to CT, develop tasks based on those experiences, and use those tasks to assess K-2 students’ CT. With the resulting games and clinical interviews, we identified various ways children think computationally. With the design of assessment tasks anchored in families’ everyday ways of doing and being, we hope to engage in discussion about how such an approach to assessment design re-imagines how learners show their ways of knowing.

Authors

• Darrell Earnest, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

• Jennifer Randall, University of Michigan

• Neena Thota, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

• Shani Mensing, University of Massachusetts - Amherst