Designing Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy for BIPOC Youth Through an Ecological Justice Transformational Game

• In Event: Disrupting Racism, Supporting Teacher-Educators, and Enacting Ecological and Social Justice

Abstract

This empirical study examined a design-based project where sixteen urban, low-income, Black, Latinx, and Asian high school students were provided with a culturally-sustaining, out-of-school learning experience where they created an interactive narrative video game about an ecological justice issue. Findings suggest that a learning environment conducive to collegial pedagogy (Chavez & Soep; 2005); culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris, 2012); sociocritical literacy (Gutiérrez, 2008), and critical computational expression (Lee & Soep; 2023) allows youth learners to deepen and apply their personal understandings of ecological justice issues to structural and systemic impacts in our interconnected and interdependent worlds. By developing publicly-disseminated products that allow BIPOC youth to speak truth to power, engagement, agency, and purpose flourished throughout the learning activity.

Authors

• Clifford H. Lee, Northeastern University

• Dexter Delano, Northeastern University

• Jailyn Zabala, Northeastern University

• Alexandra To, Northeastern University