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The embodied cognition perspective is a collection of theories that all explicate a fundamental relationship between the perceptions, actions, and movement of the body and how humans think and reason. The application of the embodied cognition perspective to instructional interventions—often referred to as embodied learning design—has the potential to aid computing education researchers and practitioners who want to meaningfully integrate more sensory and “hands on” activities in their instruction. Purpose: The objective of this article is to describe a process for, and to model, how computing designers and instructors can interrogate the embodied affordances of pedagogical activities in computing. Analytic Approach: We describe 12 embodied affordances present across six pedagogical activities. Our goal is to model the analysis of pedagogical activities for their embodied affordances. For coherence, we selected six pedagogical activities related to arrays in Java. Embodied learning offers theoretical ideas and a process for interrogating the characteristics of visual and physical resources in computing education. As with any design process, iteration and assessment are necessary to ensure that an embodied learning intervention is effective, but previous research suggests that learning is increased when students’ perceptual and physical interactions align with learning goals. 

Students from historically underrepresented communities in computer science (CS) report being told that their successes are due to special treatment based on their gender and/or racial identity. We refer to this microaggression as the discounting-success microaggression. We analyzed survey responses from 4,327 CS majors across 221 institutions in the U.S. We found that students who identify as women, Black, and/or Asian were more likely than men and white students, respectively, to report the discounting-success microaggression. This discounting-success microaggression significantly and negatively predicts students’ self-efficacy, sense of belonging, and plans to persist in CS. Our results elucidate the negative influence of the discounting-success microaggression on CS student outcomes. Efforts are needed to improve the culture and interactions in CS to eliminate the prevalence of this harmful microaggression.