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Indigenous communities remain significantly underrepresented in computer science (CS) and STEM fields, facing persistent barriers such as limited access to resources, infrastructure, and culturally relevant instruction. This study investigated how educators serving Indigenous populations designed and implemented culturally responsive computing (CRC)[2] curricula within a long-term professional development program grounded in a design-based research framework. The study examined how sustained, collaborative support enabled educators to effectively integrate Indigenous cultural knowledge, values, and practices into computer science education. Seven secondary teachers who work in schools in Arizona and New Mexico with over 90% Native American enrollment participated in a two-year professional development program called Let’s Talk Code Teaching Fellow. The program consisted of twelve online modules,weekly virtual meetings, in-personworkshops, and conference participation[3]. Following the DBR framework [1], teachers engaged in iterative cycles of lesson design, implementation, and revision, creating and teaching three culturally relevant computer science lessons. They received feedback from fellow teachers and research teams, allowing them to improve the connection between computing and cultural relevance in their lessons. The study employed a mixed-methods approach to data collection and analysis. Qualitative data included 14 finalized lesson plans, teacher reflections, teacher interviews, and classroom observation notes, which were thematically analyzed to identify common instructional practices and challenges, as well as strategies that connect culture and computing. Our findings showed that teachers sustained local culture by integrating Indigenous languages and art and innovative computing tools such as Scratch, micro: bit, and Sphero robots into their computing lessons. Teachers reported an increase in their confidence in computer science instruction following the long-term PD and benefited from a strong professional learning community. 

Based on the widely recognized situated nature of identity and youth as social producers and products, this qualitative case study reports findings from a week-long informal pet-sciences workshop for middle schoolers who have existing relationships with pets or a strong interest in future pet companionship. Mindful of the structure-agency dialectic, we analyze youth’s wayfaring and trajectories of identification as they learn about their pets at the workshop, accounting for how youth see themselves and their pets and are seen by others. In contrast to a commonly assumed analytic directionality seeing people as moving towards or away from STEM, we find that there were different ways for youth to meaningfully engage themselves in learning about their pets at the workshop. We conclude that attention to fluidity in youth’s identifications can inform us, the adults in the community, of the need to affirm the many possible trajectories that youth may follow. 

Making engages young people with the material world and reflection-in-action, creating promising science learning contexts. Emphasizing relational and social dimensions of making, we conducted a week-long workshop for middle schoolers who are current and aspiring pet companions. Supporting participants’ inquiry into pets’ senses and related behaviors, we asked them to work on maker projects meant to improve their pets’ lives. Following a qualitative analysis of participants’ positioning in relation to their pets, we present case studies of two female participants’ positioning. We find that through the process of making, the two participants demonstrated an increased awareness of pets’ biology and related behavior and their personal interests in pet care, while also differing in what aspects of human-pet relations they focused on. We conclude that through making, especially in contexts with a robust relational draw, youth become attentive to complex and otherwise difficult-to-notice transactions central to taking care of pets. 

Pets are beloved family members in many cultures. Companionship with pets motivates and positions humans as inquirers as they find out their pets' experiences with them. With the need to advance science education from dualist notions of the world and the learner as separate entities, our research team conducted a two-week online summer camp to engage teens and their pets in investigations around pets' senses. Following a qualitative analysis of participants' talk and projects at the workshop, we found that teens engaged in science learning practices while investigating aspects of their pets' lives and designing experiences for them. Additionally, participants adopted an ecological and relational approach to science learning that positioned themselves and their pets as subjects. We discuss implications for future work with pets, and for the design of other STEM learning environments that engage perspective-taking, empathy, and care. 

Participatory Design (PD) aims to minimize the unintended consequences of designs and innovations by inviting users to engage in the process (Muller & Druin, 2012). Designing with some users—for example, pets—is challenging because pets communicate in unique ways. But it holds promise because pets and humans are companions. Expecting teens' relationships with pets to motivate them to be co-designers, we organized a virtual summer workshop engaging teens in activities to understand their canine and feline pets better and design an experience to improve their pets’ lives. We analyzed video recordings of teens' engagement at the camp and their descriptions of their experience design projects using qualitative thematic analysis. We found that caring and loving relationships with pets are also contexts for engaging in a systematic design process.