What does the phrase “diverse students” mean? An exploration of CS teachers’ ideas of race, culture, and community in their classrooms

ABSTRACT

Background and Context

Recent research suggests that there is work to be done in overcoming color-evasive ideologies in Computer Science (CS) education. In particular, we have limited insight into how to support white teachers in using Culturally Responsive Computing (CRC) approaches. This paper addresses this gap in the literature by analyzing interviews with white high school CS teachers through the lens of hegemonic whiteness.

Objective

We ask two questions 1) What are the gaps between these teachers’ views on culture, community, and responsiveness, and how CRC envisions the interplay of these three elements? 2) How can we use teachers’ understandings to reconceptualize presenting CRC to them in a manner that may best benefit their students?

Method

We use semi-structured interviews of nine teachers until data saturation. We use in-vivo and values coding in the first round and code-weaving in the second round to come up with emergent themes.

Findings

Our findings show that these teachers did one or more of the following: 1) had dynamic but content-agnostic views about culture in the classroom; 2) focused on community connections with academia, industry, and/or parents; 3) framed the challenges of implementing CRC through a deficit lens; and 4) valued students’ individuality, but were essentialist about student culture.

Implications

We have implications for practitioners, e.g. to have professional developments that allow teachers to name and challenge white supremacy in CS. We also have implications for researchers, e.g. to investigate ways in which white students and teachers can benefit from anti-racist CS education.

KEYWORDS:

• Culturally responsive computing
• computer science
• race
• culture
• whiteness
• teachers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. In this paper, we will use the term “students of color” to collectively indicate those students most affected by systemic racism. This is because of current arguments in the field that the phrase “people (students) of color” does a much better job representing the history and legacy. According to some researchers, other terms such as Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) could be interpreted as “symbolizing progress without meaningful change” (Deo, 2023). In places where we specifically wish to speak about Black, Brown (Latinx), or Indigenous communities, we mention those communities specifically.

2. Here, we refer to Yosso’s critical conceptualization of cultural community wealth that students of color have, including aspirational, navigational, social, linguistic, familial, and resistant capital that together form the cultural wealth of the communities where they live (Yosso, 2005).

3. The Culturally Situated Design Tools website features a variety of culturally responsive computing educational applications that were inspired by research from the field of ethnocomputing (see Eglash et al., 2006). Many of the applications were created in collaboration with cultural experts, artists, and artisans and each application features background sections on cultural designs and practices, including the mathematical and computational content that is embedded within them. Each application also includes computing activities (e.g., visual programming challenges or physical computing builds) that can be connected to science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics curricula.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the National Science Foundation [NSF] under grant 1502462. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the NSF.