Search for: All records

Theory and practice related to computing education with racially/ethnically and linguistically diverse groups of preschoolers remain in nascent stages. Accordingly, early childhood educators both require substantial support when integrating culturally responsive computing into curriculum and instruction and offer valuable perspectives on emerging practices. The purpose of this research study is to explore how educator voice-directed efforts support the implementation of a culturally relevant preschool robotics program through multi-year professional development. Through qualitative analyses, we examined how educator voice, conceptualized as perspectives and participation, guided the direction of professional learning situated within a larger research-practice partnership using design-based research (DBR) methodology. By comparing voice across these sessions, we were able to identify what roles educators assumed within the partnership and how those roles shifted over time. Further, we are able to identify the structural and systemic factors that may have affected their participation and implementation. Findings show a contrast in roles across the different stages of the partnership, suggesting implications for embedding professional learning within broader partnership work as a way to cultivate educator leadership and to realize culturally responsive computing education in sustainable ways. 

Research practice partnerships (RPPs) that include parents and teachers as cocreators of educational programs provide opportunities to build equitable partnerships yet require university partners to intentionally develop spaces for coconstruction and synergistic interactions. RPPs built within a third space can foster engagement of all partners in the coconstruction of knowledge and practices while assuming roles and navigating partnership work through informal and formal communication. We define a third space as a hybrid, intangible space where inter- and intracultural pedagogies are constructed and shared identity is created from historical and cultural contexts of all partners. This study explored how university partners centered teacher and parent voices in the codesign and piloting phase of a culturally relevant preschool robotics program and facilitated codevelopment within a third space. Through in-depth qualitative coding, we analyzed 6 months of early partnership exchanges to identify how we, as university partners, facilitated discourse and what roles parents and teachers assumed within our third space. Results found that university partners frequently invited participation among partners and used revoicing strategies, and parents and teachers adopted roles as educators and advisors to the program design and implementation. Implications for RPPs include considering how both facilitator-discourse moves and collaborative spaces in which parents and teachers are central to partnership conversations and decisions contribute to successful outcomes. 

Through school-university partnerships that situate learning within culturally relevant educational experiences, faculty, preservice teachers, and school-based educators are able to co-construct and share scientific knowledge. This knowledge consists of pedagogical content knowledge and funds of knowledge that include both knowledge and skills developed in cultural context that have evolved historically. In early childhood education, culturally relevant Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) learning experiences are particularly important for young children's cognitive and social emotional development. This paper describes how intentional co-planning and collaboration to celebrate the US Read across America Day provided over 100 preschool children in eight classrooms with access to STEAM lessons virtually led by university preservice teachers in partnership with educators in the school. These activities engaged children in exploring art, computer science, physical science, engineering, and mathematics within the context of a culturally relevant version of the fairy tale Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Lessons implemented as part of school-university partnerships support Black and Latinx children's development of a sense of belonging in STEAM. Further, these experiences enhance teacher candidates' abilities to engage in culturally responsive STEAM teaching while receiving ongoing guidance and education from university faculty and school-based educators. Teacher education programs within higher education institutions should embrace school- university partnerships as contexts for the development of shared scientific knowledge and discourse since the benefits are twofold. First, children and teachers gain access to, and engage with, innovative STEAM experiences. Second, preservice teachers learn culturally relevant research-based instructional strategies through university coursework situated in authentic learning experiences; thus, their learning as teacher candidates is enhanced through planning, implementation, evaluation, and critical reflection.