“What Kinds of Worlds Can We Create?” Equity-Centered Digital Storytelling

• In Event: Weaving Axiological Commitments, Social Dreaming, and Digital Storytelling Toward Sociopolitical Imagination: A Collaboration

Abstract

This paper examines how a coding curriculum rooted in axiological design commitments (i.e. valuing the intertwined nature of disciplines and the importance of process and iteration for learning) supported the emergence of sociopolitical imagination for Black, Latinx and South Asian middle-school students’ in a summer STEAM and storytelling program in a midwestern suburb. A thread in program design was to counter ways that coding and other STEM fields continue to receive priority in K-12 education. Advocacy for increasing accessibility to STEM programs often hinges on diversity and inclusion initiatives (Vakil, 2018). These arguments suggest potential economic advantages for minoritized youth and girls choosing STEM careers while linking such pathways to the needs of multinational corporations. Yet, less readily has the question been asked, “What are the goals and values of CS education? (Vossoughi and Vakil, 2018)” In tracing the learning of one student that emerged from both critique and learning of coding, this study demonstrates coding becoming a tool for sociopolitical engagement and storytelling.

The case emerged from a corpus of multi-voiced fieldnotes, design documentation, audio and video recordings, student interviews and artifacts. Through micro-interactional analysis, we examined the relationship between activity design, educator commitment to political education, and student sensemaking in coding-focused curriculum.

The coding curriculum began with discussions of “What is coding? Who codes?, and What experiences have you had coding?” A story was shared by a mentor of African American girls who learned to use an early form of a sprite editor in order to create characters who looked like them and could help them tell a story that was meaningful to them. Students noticed the characters that are currently available for sprites in Scratch and pointed out race, styles of dress, gender, and different types of activities.

The student in this case study, expressed reticence about coding in Scratch at first but developed an interest in coding following these discussions and took up ways to build coding around auditions for a fairy tale play that framed gender identities in socially conscious ways.
Tracing her trajectory through the coding week illuminates ways that the design of coding activity, conversations around coding in society, and educator-student interactions fostered expansive understandings of computer science domains, and helped us attune to the values embedded in the stories youth were sharing. Understood as an artifact of her sociopolitical imagination, this student’s process demonstrates the intertwined nature of developing coding skills with her political commitments to push into what coding can be and do.

The theoretical commitments in the design of coding activity and what emerged through student engagement with the activity allows us to contribute to the field in two ways: 1) highlight implications for educators and researchers working toward the design of equity-focused technology curriculum and instruction, and 2) demonstrate how axiological commitments in activity design are critical for engagement in ways that decenter economic end goals for STEM learning and push into the ethical orientations of youth.

Authors

• Melita Morales, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

• Paula K. Hooper, Northwestern University

• Shirin Vossoughi, Northwestern University

• Teyona James-Harris, Northwestern University