Search for: All records

In this paper, we describe and reflect upon the development of critical consciousness and workplace democracy within an experimental workplace called DataWorks. Through DataWorks, we hire adults from communities historically minoritized in computing education and data careers, and train them in entry-level data skills developed through work on client projects. In this process, workers gain a range of skills. Some of these skills are technical, such as programming for data analysis; some are managerial, such as scoping and bidding projects; others are social, perhaps even political, such as the ability to say No to projects. In what follows, we describe a workshop series developed to build the workers' critical literacy and consciousness about their data work, specifically regarding the use of data in machine learning systems. After that, we describe a data project the workers questioned and resisted because they determined the work to be harmful. In that process, they demonstrated and enacted a critical consciousness towards data and machine learning. Reflecting on this enactment of data-focused critical consciousness, we identify themes that characterize a democratic workplace, describe the work of designing for organizational action and institutional relations, and discuss how worker and researcher positionality affects this work. In doing so, we argue for enabling workers to resist and refuse harmful data work and challenge the standard power structures of academic research and data work. 

For the past decade, learning scientists have come to understand the relationships between learning and space — usually outside of schools and classrooms. More recently, scholars in teaching and teacher education have called for research that considers how space and movement shape teaching and learning. In this paper, we integrate concepts and methods across the learning sciences and teacher education. We examine the relationship between classroom spatial design and the enactment of ambitious and equitable mathematics teaching. Specifically, we apply a case study approach to outline how an experienced teacher’s use of space reflects her pedagogical judgment. Findings and discussion outline six key ways this teacher considers space in her classroom design and her facilitation of classroom interactions. We suggest this study has implications for future efforts to characterize classroom spaces in ways that integrate ideas in the learning sciences and teacher education.