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Students in Appalachia have a heritage of problem-solving. We explore how computational thinking (CT) relates to and complements this heritage by analyzing 34 local ingenuity stories, and perspectives from 35 community members about the relevance of CT. We found the two problem-solving approaches are meaningfully different, but can be used in concert. Since equating them could contribute to confusion and cultural erasure, researchers and educators bringing CT as a problem solving strategy into rural and other resourceful cultures must clarify what they mean by “CT helps problem solving.” In these cultures, CT skills are better introduced as new tools to expand students’ problem-solving toolkits, rather than tools that are identical to or better than those traditionally used in their culture. 

Our research-practice partnership with two school districts in Eastern Kentucky has created a rurally sustaining computational thinking (CT) pathway. In this paper we share our project’s operational understanding of the concept of rural sustainability in the context of CT pathways. We posit that an effective CT pathway for rural communities must be firmly rooted in their cultural wealth, funds of knowledge, and socioeconomic priorities. Moreover, it should empower students to draw upon their own innovation heritage, leveraging CT as a tool to identify and address community challenges. Emphasizing the necessity of incorporating rural contexts into discussions on equitable access to computing education, our conceptualization provides insights into how policy and research can contribute to this important goal. 

The NSF-funded “Tough as Nails, Nimble Fingers: Developing a K-8 Coding Pathway for Kentucky Appalachia” project, might have been an education initiative where “experts” flew in from cities, taught the latest trends in science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics (STEAM) education, and called it a success. It also could have been a project that dissipated under the pressures and limitations of the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, our K-8 computational thinking (CT) and STEAM education initiative in Kentucky Appalachia, which began in fall 2019, has turned into a vehicle of community collaboration and healing, owned and co-operated by community members. This paper focuses on how the teacher training evolved over time to promote narrative development and healing. The economic hardship and correlative social fracturing, from which Eastern Kentucky wishes to heal, is not obvious from a casual visit to their beautiful mountain community. We rarely speak about it in project-related meetings, even four years into a trusted partnership. Illustratively articulated in Appalachian Ingenuity (Bit Source, 2018) and elsewhere (Keefe, 2005), the struggle is of a longstanding nature, largely stemming from the collapse of the coal mining industry, associated with losses of well-paying jobs, friends and family leaving the area in droves, and mental health issues related to perceived hopelessness and loss of dignity. This is atop at least six decades of struggle to combat negative stereotypes about the region, perpetuated by politicians and media (Bowler 1985; Newman, 2019). Our very first summer teacher training (2020) was focused on teaching introductory CT and broader STEAM lessons, and garnering teacher buy-in and enthusiasm, especially with a pivot to an online format due to the pandemic. The positive participant evaluations gave us confidence that the teachers would benefit from knowing how their CT lessons can contribute beyond their classroom, to the healing and empowerment of the greater community. Therefore, for summer 2021, we dedicated a day for reflection and celebration (“Inspire Friday”), and included a panel discussion by local workforce representatives to convey three important points: (1) there is a lot of ingenuity among Appalachian people (and CT overlaps with this), (2) it is important to share stories of success and hope, (3) educators play an essential role in community revitalization. The appreciation that the teachers expressed about this workforce panel was very positive (e.g., “I truly loved this portion of this week. It allowed us to evaluate how education is an important piece of the larger work that is going on in our region.”) that it emboldened us to further revise the training for 2022. We had daily “Inspire talks” representing multiple local industries (e.g., telecommunications, music), that exemplified Appalachian ingenuity and emphasized the importance of CT competencies. We also added leadership training (e.g., storytelling and “what is CT?”) that provided frameworks for educators to become agents of change beyond their classroom. We also arranged a field trip to a local software development company, where teachers interacted with staff (former coal miners) about skills they look for in employees. The evaluations and subsequent conversations with educators strongly suggested that the workshop contributed to healing, hope and a new culturally responsive vision for CT education in Appalachia. 

In this panel presentation, Emi Iwatani applies the three tenets of civic imagination (advanced by Henry Jenkins, Sangita Shresthova and colleagues) to explain how research practice partnership projects in Eastern Kentucky has required inclusion and rigor, in order to work towards the future. She argues that "rigor" (strictness, exactness) in such co-design work must be applied not just to the inferential, knowledge generation processes (e.g., instrumentation, analysis) but also to setting up pre-conditions in alignment with the tenets.