Computer Science for Indigenous Linguistic and Cultural Revitalization (Poster 4)

• In Event: Integrating Computational Thinking in K-12: Strategies for Elementary Education and Teacher Development

Abstract

Objectives: To work alongside Indigenous communities through a research-practice partnership (RPP) to design and employ elementary computer science education in ways that advance school and community desires to forward Indigenous cultural and language revitalization.

Background: The RPP is called the [RPP name] collaborative and began in 2019. The project originated through local community desires to provide CS education to elementary students on the Wind River Reservation (WRR) in ways that integrated recently adopted CS and Social Studies (SS) standards – including the Indian Education for All (IEFA) standards. As a result, an RPP was formed through support from an [funding agency] grant that includes [school district], [school district], [school district], [research non-profit], [state department of education], [PD provider], and [research/evaluation organization]. Together, [RPP] members worked to conduct year-round CS professional development and support elementary teachers to design and implement CS lessons in ways that support school and community Indigenous education sovereignty and cultural-linguistic revitalization.

Methods & data sources: The [RPP] collaborative collected three elementary CS lesson plans and reflection forms from each teacher. The research partners reviewed these lesson plans to document how teachers took up the CS concepts and Scratch programming skills they learned in professional development sessions to create lessons that addressed the districts’ goals for cultural-linguistic revitalization. Researchers also reviewed reflections to synthesize information about the supports that helped to facilitate lesson development.

Results: Analysis of teacher lesson plans and reflection forms revealed that teachers focused on using CS to teach and revitalize Indigenous languages. They did so in two ways. First, they leverage the expertise of elders and language experts to express CS terminology in Indigenous languages and teach the terminology to students. Translations reflected the verb-based nature of the languages, in contrast with the noun-based nature of English, supporting teachers to teach CS through an Indigenous worldview. Second, teachers had students use Scratch sound blocks to record themselves speaking their Indigenous language. Reflection forms indicated this supported student confidence in speaking their language, building their Indigenous identities. In their reflections, the teachers also emphasized the importance of collaboration among classroom teachers, Collaborative members with stronger skills in Scratch (sometimes including the professional development provider but more often referencing teachers who had been part of [RPP] for multiple years), and most importantly, community members with Indigenous language expertise.

Scholarly significance: Elementary teachers framed CS learning via an Indigenous epistemology while expertly using a Western epistemological CS tool, Scratch, to support Indigenous cultural-linguistic revitalization. Providing CS professional development supported teachers in exercising education sovereignty at the classroom level as they autonomously and collaboratively designed and enacted school-based CS learning in ways that foremost attended to the cultural identity and development of Indigenous elementary students.

Authors

• Marissa Spang, American Institutes for Research

• Tia Devonne Byers, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

• Kathryn Rich, American Institutes for Research