Performing arts computing environments have received little attention in the educational sphere; yet, they offer opportunities for learners to validate their efforts, ideas, and skills through showcasing their work in a public-facing performance. In this work, we explore an out-of-school dance and computing educational program run by the organization, STEM From Dance. The organizational mission is to create an equitable learning experience for young women of color to engage with computing while exposing them to STEM careers. Through an analysis of eleven interviews with youth participants, instructors, and the executive director, we examine how the social, cultural, and political dimensions of the learning environment facilitate identity work in computing and dance. Our findings point to three primary activities used by the organization to promote equity: (1) providing psychological safety through a supportive community environment, (2) meaningfully engaging with learners’ social and cultural context through creative work with constructionist artifacts, and (3) actively promoting identity work as women of color in computing and STEM through both artifact work and community events. Applying the constructs of identity and psychological safety we explore the tensions and synergies of designing for equity in this performing arts and computing learning environment. We demonstrate how the seemingly contradictory elements of a high-stakes performance within a novice learning environment provides unique opportunities for supporting young women of color in computing, making them non-negotiable in the organization’s efforts to promote equity and inclusion. Our work illustrates how attending closely to the sociocultural dimensions in a constructionist learning environment provides lenses for navigating equity, identity work, and support for inclusive computing.
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Identifying Youths’ Spheres of Influence through Participatory Design
When designing learning environments and curricula for diverse populations, it is beneficial to connect
with learners’ cultural knowledge, and the related interests, they bring to the learning context. To aid in the design and development of a computing curriculum and identify these areas of personal and cultural connection, we conducted a series of participatory design sessions. The goal of these sessions was to col- lect ideas around ways to make the instructional materials reflect the interests and voices of the learners. In this paper, we examine how the use of participatory design techniques can advance our understanding of the domains influencing today’s youth. Specifically, we examine the ideas generated by youth during these sessions as a means to understand what influences them and their ideas of cultural relevancy. In this work, we identify the resources children draw on across design activities and organize them to extend the Spheres of Influence framework (L. Archer et al., 2014). We identify seven spheres to attend to when designing for learning: Home and Family, School and Work, Hobbies and Leisure, Media, Interests, Peers, and Identity.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1738758
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10293775
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Designs for learning
- Volume:
- 13
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2001-7480
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 20-34
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Objectives We examine the community epistemologies in youth’s iterative refinements of STEM-rich inventions across settings and time. Iteration in STEM-rich engineering/invention work refers to re-thinking ideas/designs within prototyping processes (Cunningham & Kelly, 2017). The objective of this paper is to examine the political dimensions of iteration through a) how iteration involves pre- and post-design “lives” of inventions especially towards new social futures, and b) the intentional incorporation of cultural epistemologies towards advancing new forms of legitimate inventor knowledge/practice (Yosso, 2005). Framing We draw from critical justice and consequential learning studies. Critical justice focuses on recognizing diversity and addressing structural inequalities perpetuated through systemic racism and classism. It seeks re-shifted relations of power and position within multiple scales-of-activity in learning, intersected with historicized injustices in learning environments. Consequential learning examines what matters to people, and how associated values and practices, when coordinated through social activity, allows for imagining new social futures (Gutierrez, 2012). Viewing the iterative process of inventing through a justice-oriented consequential lens calls into question traditional modes of knowing, and challenges/expands who and what areas of expertise are recognized and valued. Methods Our study takes place in two community makerspaces in mid-sized cities. Both center community engagement and support youth in designing/inventing to address problems they and their communities care about. Both also support minoritized youth in inventing through engagement with a wide range of community/STEM stakeholders. In researcher-educator roles, we collaborated with both makerspaces to establish programs supporting youth in sustained engagement in STEM and making/inventing in culturally-sustaining ways. In our two-year, longitudinal critical ethnography, data were generated in weekly community making sessions between 2016-2018. Data include artifacts, youth conversation groups, and videos capturing youth interaction with STEM and community experts at various stages in their design process. Analysis involved multiple stages and levels of coding based on open-coding and constant comparison procedures. Findings We ground our paper in four in-depth longitudinal cases of youth’s iterative design work: Nila’s light-up #stopracism sign; Su’zanne’s massaging slipper, Sharon’s geodesic play dome, and Jazmyn’s portable fan. Across cases, we illustrate three findings. First, youth located broader injustices within local making/inventing discourses with support from community and STEM allies, suggesting youth drew from multiple epistemologies, some grounded in community cultural wealth, others in STEM. For example, Su’Zanne drew from a familial culture of care and resistance in recognizing injustices nested in homelessness while iterating a way to make her slipper “more massaging.” The geodesic dome youth-makers drew from collective solidarity/resistance in making a structure for younger peers due to unjust lack of play infrastructure. Second, iterative engagement involving community wealth afforded further design and inventing experiences and expanded ownership over inventions across many stakeholders. For example, youth turned Nila’s #stopracism sign on during group discussions when they felt that racism needed to be foregrounded. Third, the afterlife of youth invention processes impacted the emergent inventor-maker culture through influencing the iterative process. Significance Iterations expand hybridization of cultural knowledge/practice and STEM-rich inventing, re-shaping whose cultural knowledge matters, and fostering justice-oriented collective outcomes.more » « less
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The biodesign studio: Constructions and reflections of high school youth on making with living mediamore » « less
Abstract Most constructionist efforts have focused on supporting learners with tools for designing with digital and/or physical media. Recent developments in life sciences now allow K‐12 learners to design with living materials, or to biodesign. In this paper, we report on the development of a biodesign studio activity called biocakes wherein teams of high school youth genetically modified a yeast strain to bake a nutrient fortified food product. Using a qualitative deductive analysis of classroom observations, interviews and projects, we examined high school youth experiences and reflections of these activities to answer three research questions: (1) What kind of artefacts did youth make with living media? (2) How did youth engage in biodesign? and (3) What did youth have to say about their biodesign experiences? We discuss how our analyses of biodesign applications highlight the importance of assembly practices, social engagement and imaginative design for constructionist learning. These insights provide compelling examples for designing with living media in K‐12 education.
Practitioner notes What is already known about this topic?
Constructionist perspectives shape important ideas about what we know about science learning, and notably in computer science fields.
One widely taken up example includes making, where learners use crafts to make interactive computational objects.
In life science, constructionism also provides insights about learning using digital media to model biological systems or interact with living materials.
What this paper adds?
This paper extends these perspectives by examining production and engagement when learners construct
with living materials—an approach that has only recently been possible with the development of accessible wet lab tools.We frame learning activities as a studio model—that emphasised application design, iteration and critique—to better assess the roles assembly, construction and speculative design play in production that uses living materials.
Our findings suggest that assembly is important for creating accessible points of entry to complex biological fabrication processes.
We also find that speculative design provides an opportunity for learners to extend their existing abilities beyond what is otherwise available given their expertise or access to resources, and thus expansively explore related ideas.
Implications for practice and/or policy
Assembly and speculative design have important places in constructionist‐driven production with living materials and could, therefore, be leveraged in practice.
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Artistic computing learning environments have been of central importance in the exploration of how to support equity and inclusion in computing. Explorations within e-textiles, music, and interactive media, for example, have created diverse opportunities for learning how to program while creating culturally relevant artifacts. However, there is a gap in our understanding of the design processes of learners in these constructionist environments, including how the computational artifacts and their components impact the learning processes and the ways they build meaning and agency with computing. We advocate for research to attend more closely to the materiality of the computational materials to understand how they impact the social and cultural dimensions in which students are learning. In this paper, we present an analysis of 6 high school learners’ experiences within a co-designed arts and computing curriculum. Our analyses highlight how the materiality of the components impacted the ways in which learners developed personal and epistemological connections to computing based on how it enabled them to connect to their interests, represent their ideas, engage with their community, and overcome or navigate around challenges to get to their final designs. We demonstrate how centralizing the materiality in the design of computational construction kits can inform how we support agency and engagement with computing.more » « less
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null (Ed.)Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the designed cultural ecology of a hip-hop and computational science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) camp and the ways in which that ecology contributed to culturally sustaining learning experiences for middle school youth. In using the principles of hip-hop as a CSP for design, the authors question how and what practices were supported or emerged and how they became resources for youth engagement in the space. Design/methodology/approach The overall methodology was design research. Through interpretive analysis, it uses an example of four Black girls participating in the camp as they build a computer-controlled DJ battle station. Findings Through a close examination of youth interactions in the designed environment – looking at their communication, spatial arrangements, choices and uses of materials and tools during collaborative project work – the authors show how a learning ecology, designed based on hip-hop and computational practices and shaped by the history and practices of the dance center where the program was held, provided access to ideational, relational, spatial and material resources that became relevant to learning through computational making. The authors also show how youth engagement in the hip-hop computational making learning ecology allowed practices to emerge that led to expansive learning experiences that redefine what it means to engage in computing. Research limitations/implications Implications include how such ecologies might arrange relations of ideas, tools, materials, space and people to support learning and positive identity development. Originality/value Supporting culturally sustaining computational STEM pedagogies, the article argues two original points in informal youth learning 1) an expanded definition of computing based on making grammars and the cultural practices of hip-hop, and 2) attention to cultural ecologies in designing and understanding computational STEM learning environments.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/http://doi.org/10.16993/dfl.163
