Equitable approaches: opportunities for computational thinking with emphasis on creative production and connections to community

ABSTRACT

Decisions about participation in computer science and engineering opportunities are often made prior to high school, and these decisions are frequently mediated by prior experience, interest, and sense of fit with community. In this article, we investigate how the Digital Youth Divas, an out-of-school program for middle school girls from non-dominant communities, engaged participants in computational thinking linked to their broader interests, home networks, and continuing opportunities. Results indicate increases in knowledge measures for girls with and without prior learning experiences and provide evidence that through project work and a strong focus on building community, girls engaged in computational practices in ways that shifted or provided new computational perceptions about themselves and the domain. This exploratory study of the Digital Youth Divas program emphasizes the importance of understanding and supporting computational perceptions alongside deepening knowledge and experience.

KEYWORDS:

• Computational thinking
• identity
• equity
• learning ecologies
• out-of-school learning

Acknowledgements

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of funding organizations. This work is a collaborative effort on the part of Digital Youth Network researchers, designers, practitioners, educators, and youth and their families.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

N. Pinkard is associate professor in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University and faculty director of the Office Community Education Partnerships. She is the founder of Digital Youth Network and L3, a social learning platform that connects youth’s learning opportunities across the school, home, community, and beyond. Her current scholarly interests include the design and use of pedagogical-based social networks and socio-technical systems to support community-level ecological models of learning.

C. K. Martin is a learning research and design consultant and a senior researcher with the YouthLAB (Youth Learning Across Boundaries) group at Stanford University and the Digital Youth Network in Chicago, IL. Recently, she has been the external evaluator for the Libraries Ready to Code initiative from the American Library Association, working with informal educators to understand and document how libraries can support computational thinking opportunities for young people in communities across the US.

S. Erete is a researcher and technology designer, who has studied the role of technology in addressing various social issues in Chicago for over a decade. Dr. Erete is an assistant professor in the College of Computing and Digital Media at DePaul University and co-director of the Technology for Social Good Research and Design Lab. With a background in computer and social science, she is an expert in understanding how to situate and evaluate the use of technologies in resource-constrained communities to address issues such as violence, civic engagement, health and STEM education.

ORCID

C. K. Martin http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5731-0099

Additional information

Funding

This work and research was funded by an ITEST (Interactive Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers) grant (#1433838) from the National Science Foundation.