Supporting Historically Minoritized Youth’s Computational Literacy Through Culturally-Relevant and Interdisciplinary Making and Wearable Learning Activities

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 7:45 am - Gold 4
  In Roundtable Session: Designing Inclusive and Human-Centered Technology for Learning

Abstract

In this design-based research-practice partnership, we build upon our prior efforts to understand and support diverse youth’s STEM engagement, curiosity and computational thinking through learner-centered, culturally-relevant and interdisciplinary making and coding informal learning activities. We provide a mixed methods analysis, which focuses on out-of-school STEM+arts - or STE(A)M - learning activities with low-income and predominantly BIPOC youth, who are historically underrepresented in computing and technology education, focusing on changes in their computational literacy. We report on initial quantitative findings and a qualitative case of youth who participated as part of summer programs in two different states (in the Midwest and in the mid-Atlantic). We discuss complexities and offer future directions for culturally- inclusive STE(A)M learning activities that promote computational literacy.

Authors

• Gabriela T. Richard, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

• Yanping Xu, Pennsylvania State University

• Lillyanna Faimon, Pennsylvania State University

• Heather Toomey Zimmerman, Pennsylvania State University

• Jennifer L. Weible, Central Michigan University