Recent discussions have focused on rich STEM learning opportunities and various equity challenges in setting up and researching out-of-school makerspaces and activities. In turning to school classrooms, we want to understand the critical practices that teachers employ in broadening and deepening access to making. In this paper, we investigate two high school teachers’ approaches in implementing the Exploring Computer Science curriculum using a novel 8-week, electronic textiles unit where students designed wearable textile projects with a microcontroller, sensors and LED lights. Drawing on observations and interviews with teachers and students, we share emergent practices that teachers used in transforming their classrooms into a makerspace, including modeling in-progress artifacts, valuing expertise from students, and promoting connections in personalized work. We discuss in which ways these teaching practices succeeded in broadening access to making while deepening participation in computing and establishing home-school connections.
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Girls as Experts, Helpers, Organizers, and Leaders: Designing for Equitable Access and Participation in CSCL Environments
Within the CSCL community and in computing and computational making more
broadly, issues of equity continue to be under-researched and undertheorized. Here, we examine how FUSE Studios – a set of in-school, choice-based, STEAM learning environments, based around a set of digital and tangible making challenges – supports equitable access to and participation in making and computing. Drawing on web-log data and video-ethnographic data,
we argue that four characteristics of FUSE support equity: the design of the challenges; the diverse ways of knowing and doing supported by the activity system; the specific interactions encouraged by the activity system; and the program’s placement inside school. We focus, here, on gender equity, but also discuss implications and planned research on other aspects of equity.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1657438
- PAR ID:
- 10158693
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning, Lyon, France.
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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