Breaking the Code: Confronting Racism in Computer Science through Community, Criticality, and Citizenship
In this episode I unpack Yadav and Heath’s (2022) publication titled “Breaking the code: Confronting racism in computer science through community criticality, and citizenship,” which articulates some biases in CS curricular design and pedagogy, then provides three suggestions for teaching CS as an agenda for social reconstruction.
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Welcome back to another episode of the
csk8 podcast my name is jared o'leary
each week of this podcast is either an
interview with a guest or multiple
guests or a solo episode where i unpack
some scholarship in relation to computer
science education in this week's
particular episode i'm unpacking a paper
titled breaking the code colon
confronting racism and computer science
through community criticality and
citizenship which was written by aman
yadav and marie k heath apologies if i
mispronounced any names here's the
abstract for this particular paper quote
the unexamined power and prejudice
embedded within technologies and
societies has led to direct harm to
individuals of color minoritized groups
and the us ideal of a multi-racial
democracy rather than an accident of a.i
or a glitch of the system these
inequalities highlight the invisible and
impressive architecture a new gem code
encoded within the bones of the
technology at the same time computer
science education has grown considerably
over the last decade we ask how can
educators address embedded injustice
within the k-12 cs education using
information asymmetry as a conceptual
framing we argue for the need to address
racialized and patriarchal biases
through curricular design and teaching
in cs we argue for a participatory and
community-centered approach to cs
curricula which facilitates community
co-designed cs centers criticality and
foster civic education within cs end
quote if i were to summarize this paper
into a single sentence i would say that
this paper articulates some biases in cs
curricular design and pedagogy then
provides three suggestions for teaching
cs as an agenda for social
reconstruction now you can find a direct
link to this paper in the show notes
which is at jaredoluy.com or by simply
going to the app that you're listening
to this on and clicking the link in the
description you'll also notice in there
that it says that this podcast is
powered by boot up which is the
non-profit that i work for where i
create 100 free elementary coding
curriculum and we provide paid
professional development at boot up
pd.org and on my website jaredaler.com
there are hundreds if not thousands of
computer science education resources
that are available for free to use but
have fun exploring them if you haven't
yet and if you check out my website
you'll also notice that i post a lot of
gaming and drumming content but it's
neatly organized on my website unlike my
twitter feed which is just a ton of
content and even more actually coming
out when i prepare for these podcast
episodes i go through and i read the
paper and i'll hide it light it i'll
write some notes for myself just some
like pointers and whatnot of things to
talk about or things that it makes me
think of or questions i have whatnot now
i've got to admit there are more
highlighted parts than there are not i
highly recommend reading this paper i'm
gonna do my best to not read the whole
thing out loud because there are so many
quotes that i'm going to share and
attempt to paraphrase just so it's not
like an issue with copyright or anything
but again you can find a link to this
paper in the show notes all right so the
very first sentence of this paper states
quote while the segregationist laws of
the jim crow era have been dismantled
laws policies and algorithms continue to
perpetuate racialized inequalities in
the united states end quote from page
one and that is a very important quote
kind of sets up the tone of this
particular paper so it's like yeah we've
made some improvements in terms of
dismantling some of the gem crow error
laws and whatnot but we still got a lot
of problems to work through and in
computer science education it's not just
the algorithms that are biased there's
also
design and curricula in standards
pedagogies etc that are also biased so
this paper kind of highlights some
areas that we need to work on as a field
and then provide some suggestions on how
we can work through that so in this
introduction the authors highlight some
pretty popular cases of hey here's some
bias found in facial recognition
technology how it misidentifies
particularly black and brown citizens
also talks about how
ads go to different types of names so
like black identifying names and what
identifying names will receive different
types of ads and how this can create or
perpetuate some inequalities so to
address the algorithmic biases that are
going on in there we need to help
prepare computer scientists and
programmers to become more aware of
their biases and actively work towards
eliminating biases in software hardware
etc but the authors argue that in order
to actually do this the core of cs needs
to focus on justice and civics now in
previous podcast episodes i talked about
different images of curricula and
curricular structures and one of them is
curriculum as an agenda for social
reconstruction so in this case i would
argue that what this paper is forwarding
is that computer science as a field and
curricula should be an agenda for social
reconstruction now here's a quote from
page one that really resonates with me
reminds me of a paper that i co-authored
with kathy benedict and it talks about
neoliberal influence on music technology
and how educators and students musicians
etc can actually subvert that neoliberal
influence by engaging in
software and hardware modification and
creation practices using computer
science concepts and practices and
whatnot so i'll include a link to that
in the show notes but i'll also just go
ahead and do an unpacking scholarship
episode on this in a couple weeks
because it's got some really interesting
points in there i do say so myself that
relates to this particular paper alright
so here's a final couple sentences from
the end of the introduction that really
summarizes kind of like the main point
so quote we believe that computer
science has many possible benefits
however we also believe that structural
injustices exist in society and
technology and that being a good coder
means understanding social context and
the civic responsibility of coders to
work toward more just futures the aim of
this work is to call attention to the
dangers harms and downsides of cs as it
is currently taught end quote from page
two and that is a really important thing
to consider i've noticed a tendency with
some educators who are
very passionate about whatever subject
area or domain they are teaching that
some educators only present it within a
positive light and a lot of the
discourse around computer science
education is like hey here are all these
unmet jobs hey here's a way that you can
get out of poverty by learning some
concepts and practices or hey computer
science allows you to express yourself
where computational thinking can be used
with everything even though i disagree
with that etc so it's all it's like
positive like look at all this great
things that computer science can do and
while yes that is good to consider and
good to promote and it's great for
advocacy work we also as a field really
need to kind of sit down and grapple
with some of the problems with computer
science education so one of the larger
problems that i really appreciate that
the authors mention in here is the
neoliberal influence on computer science
education so here's a quote from page
two quote the focus on broadening
participation in computer science is
often driven by economics and the need
for enough people with computing
knowledge to meet the demand for
computing jobs the predominant discourse
maintains that women and people of color
have been shut out of a prestigious and
economically impactful career path one
that might lead to financial success and
a life-changing shift in socioeconomic
status researchers often hypothesize the
causes of underrepresentation in stem
careers were due to a leaky pipeline and
lack of access to stem education in
response to this criticism government
industry and non-profit organizations
have spent millions of dollars with the
aim to increase representation within cs
and the cs pipeline end quote and a
little bit further down quote however we
also see the above pipeline argument as
grounded in a problematic assumption
that a career in cs is fundamentally
good and perhaps is also a way out of
poverty all of these intersecting
assumptions are tinged with the deficit
notions of systemically minoritized
groups an overly opportunistic approach
to structural racism and patriarchy
within the field of cs and neoliberal
notions of production and wealth end
quote both of those quotes are from page
two so the authors go on to say that we
often are measuring growth in the field
like specifically in the k-12 area by
looking at ap classes to see oh are the
elementary and middle school efforts
increasing the numbers of
students who are enrolled in ap computer
science courses at the high school level
and then we also look at okay of the
students who are enrolled what are the
past rates within different demographics
and whatnot but the authors argue that
looking at computer science from this
lens does not consider the systemic
barriers that different groups of people
face instead quote it perpetuates the
meritocracy myth in computer science
that suggests that access and hard work
will lead to success in reality the
opportunities within computer science
are racialized and gendered in ways that
the social economic and political
structures make it possible for some to
succeed over others this leads us to
wonder whether the measures of success
are flawed whether the pedagogies of cs
are insufficient to teach black and
brown students and whether these
traditional measures reinforce
structural problems within computer
science we certainly believe that
increasing representation and success of
black and brown students is one aspect
of equity focused computer science
education however we cannot address
anti-blackness by simply increasing
representation in computing given that
anti-blackness is no glitch and the
system is accurately rigged we need to
go beyond broadening participation to
tackle the design and deployment of
technologies that disproportionately
impact black and brown communities and
reproduce white supremacy
heteronormativity patriarchy and settler
colonialism end quote from page two this
reminds me a lot of the paper that i
unpacked by scott and elliot so i'll
include a link to it in the show notes
it was titled stem diversity and
inclusion efforts for women of color a
critique of the new labor system and in
that particular paper they use
sharecropping as a metaphor for
critiquing basically neoliberalism in
stem and cs education and how we are
setting up people for failure in jobs by
saying hey you can get more money and
you can do this great thing and then
they go into these jobs and there's
sexism racism homophobia etc perpetuated
within the cultures within different
organizations corporations that employ
computer scientists programmers so ellie
and scott are arguing hey we need to not
just send people into these problematic
workplaces we also as a field need to
talk about the problems in these
workspaces and improve them so the way
that i kind of read amman and marie's
paper is so it's like a yes and so the
authors are arguing hey we need to fix
these issues in industry and in the
field and we also need to talk about
some of the problems in k12 space which
i really appreciate that they have such
a critical lens and are willing to look
at something that they are clearly
passionate about and problematize it
because there are some wonderful things
with computer science but there's also
some things that are like hey we can't
sweep this under the rug we really need
to sit down and talk about this in
particular quote we need to bring
criticality to computer science
education that challenges the way design
and deployment of technologies harm and
oppress communities of color and examine
the role computer science plays in that
end quote it's from page three so
because the authors posit to that
curriculum should examine the role of
oppression and bias and harm in cs they
ask questions like quote what does this
look like at a k-12 level how does the
field bring critical computer science to
k-12 classrooms that challenges
color-blind racism and center
communities where students live end
quote from page three those are some
excellent questions so the next section
is on the theoretical frame link so the
way that they are going to look at
like the field and the discourse and
whatnot and influences like power on k12
cs education is using information
asymmetry which is actually something
that i hadn't heard of as well as a
concept of lead user innovation so
here's a quote from page three quote
information asymmetry occurs when
designers bake their biases into the
design of a technology resulting in a
product that does not match the needs of
all users end quote and then a little
bit further down quote because members
of the dominant social group designed
the product the commodities and services
center the needs of the designers but do
not serve the needs of marginalized
people lead user innovation offers one
way to combat information asymmetry as
lead user innovators tinker and
democratize technologies in order to
make them more just and functional in
quote also from page three so again this
really resonates with a paper that i'll
talk about in two weeks alright so a
little bit further down on page three
quote most cs curricula and associated
testing prioritize technical
competencies and are designed to
encourage passing standardized exams to
meet the needs of the computing industry
the tech industry is a major founder of
computer science education organizations
that lead the design and implementation
of cs curricula in k-12 schools given
that technology companies continue to
cause harm and oppress efforts to
improve local communities and support
people of color cs educators need to be
skeptical of their role in cs curriculum
and its purpose in k-12 classrooms when
cs curriculum developers prioritize the
needs of the industry rather than
interrogating how computing is used as a
tool for repression it creates an
information asymmetry between curriculum
developers and teachers and learners end
quote from page three so then the
authors go on to say hey we have like
this culture subconcept within the like
k12 computer science framework which
i'll include a link to in the show notes
if you haven't read it and while it is
attempting to help students and teachers
explore some of the problems in
technology the authors argue that it
also could be problematic some of these
standards by not exploring how
individual companies are exploiting
workers or surveilling them or impacting
local economies etc right so the next
section is titled community criticality
and citizenship within cs classrooms so
there are subsections in here for each
of those three particular topics which
they present as kind of like a response
to these problems so they're not just
like hey here are these problems what do
we do about it they're saying hey here
are these problems and here are three
potential ways that we can address some
of these issues as a field which i
appreciate a lot of critical discourse
studies that i have read like especially
in music education there's this tendency
to be like hey this thing is bad it's
really bad like super bad but i'm not
gonna tell you how we might be able to
improve it just figure it out and that i
think is kind of problematic it's kind
of like when you go on twitter and you
just see
all the bad stuff going on and you just
gotta keep on swiping that's what it
feels like in academia it's like hey
there's all this really bad stuff and
we're not actually going to engage in
any kind of conversation about how to
improve it we're just going to keep
talking about how bad it is and that's
just that that's not good it's great to
point out things that are problematic
but we also need to you know act upon it
provide potential solutions etc so i
really appreciate that the authors did
that well thank you so here's some
questions that kind of frame this
particular section these questions are
from pages three and page four quote how
does the field move away from a top-down
approach to cs education that paints
computing as a solution to address
wealth inequality without acknowledging
the need for structural changes how do
educators teach computing in ways that
allow students to use it for personal
agency and solving community problems
how do scholars highlight the role of
computer science in the design of
technologies that perpetuates existing
societal hierarchies and inequalities
how does cs education prepare students
of computing to focus on justice in
quote so let's explore some of those
questions in the first subsection on
here on community all right so the
authors would begin by discussing the
book stuck in the shallow end by
margolis at all and so in this
particular introduction for this section
they're talking about how there is a
tendency and still is a tendency in the
field of cs education to focus
specifically on the concepts and
practices and not actually focusing on
individual student needs so this is
top-down approach that is often driven
by industry that is saying hey we have
these jobs we need people to fill them
let's recruit from within high school in
particular and maybe even create some
programs that help funnel into or build
up the high school program which will
eventually lead to more workers who can
fill these jobs so because it's driven
by
corporate influence and often money from
corporations the interests being served
are the corporations interests rather
than the students in the schools and
this can create some problems however
there have been some teachers who have
been able to address some of the
information asymmetry by challenging
some of these biases and problems baked
into like curriculum or standards etc
and again the authors would argue that
the teachers who are going against this
information asymmetry are engaging in
lead user innovation when they are
engaging in cs through civic engagement
that impacts local communities or
individuals within the classroom one way
that some teachers in cs have engaged in
lead user innovation is through
culturally responsive computing which
quote draws in students vernacular
culture such as music graffiti etc into
the classroom to provide students a
sense of ownership of their own learning
in quote and a little bit further down
they suggest that culturally responsive
computing quote requires cs educators
cultural experts and technologists to
collaborate to develop their own
competencies together so that their
intersecting expertise would lead to a
deeper multi-directional culturally
responsive computing engagements
connecting academic pursuits of cultural
wealth for example hair salons and
technological wealth for example
computer science departments end quote
from page four but if we're going to
engage in culturally responsive
computing practices we need to actually
address
how it's going to be implemented in the
classroom by looking at some of the
biases that teachers might have
towards minoritized groups so some of
these biases might be
like oh this particular demographic or
type of student is uninterested in
technology or computer science or
whatever or
there's a lack of family and peer
support for pursuing this degree so i
should focus on other students or well
they're not really going to have the
math and science backgrounds to be able
to do this all of these are problematic
assumptions that some educators might
have around computer science so we need
to address those so the kpoor center
released a framework that kind of talks
about three different approaches that
you can use to
unpack some of these biases quote one
explore and reflect upon their own
identities power and privilege two honor
a firm and use students intersectional
identities within their classroom and
three intentionally recruit students
from marginalized groups end quote i did
an unpacking scholarship episode on this
particular framework i highly recommend
taking a look at that whether it's
listening to the episode or actually
reading the framework itself so i'll
include a link to that in the show notes
all right so for this particular
subsection the community little summary
right here is
we need to focus not just on concepts
and practices we also need to focus on
the community within the classes and the
schools that we work in all of them not
just certain demographics but all
demographics and then also think about
how we can expand beyond that to have a
positive impact on the local communities
in the schools that we work so not just
focusing on concepts and practices but
also thinking on impact to individuals
and groups the next subsection is on
criticality so the authors argue that we
need to address some of the biases
embedded within the design of technology
and the processes used to create those
technologies and this is technology
broadly speaking so for example one form
of technology might be facial
recognition or even just like automatic
soap dispensers and whether or not they
detect darker skin tones but then also
technologies such as like loans for
banks housing etc and then a little bit
further down on page five the authors
argue that quote current curriculum
focuses on learning about computing and
developing technical competencies
however there is no discussion of how cs
contributes to maintaining and
perpetuating existing social hierarchies
white supremacism and racism as such
there is information asymmetry between
the curriculum that focuses on preparing
students for a computing job and the
importance of understanding and
challenging the role of cs and causing
harm end quote a little bit further down
the authors cite some others like amy co
who was interviewed on this podcast and
it was a phenomenal interview so amy and
colleagues quote argue that we need to
challenge the idea that software is
always right value neutral and we will
solve all our problems rather they
suggest that educators must replace
these conceptions with the reality that
software is often wrong software always
embeds its creators values and biases
and software can only solve some
problems in many cases creates new ones
end quote so whether we're talking about
a program or a.i or some hardware or
whatever it is important for educators
and students to consider the harmful
consequences that might be baked into
those different
technologies like a very simple example
is scissors if you're right-handed and
you use scissors that are for
right-handed people it'll work really
well and then if you switch it over to
your left hand like if you know you're
left-handed it won't cut and if you
don't believe me try it well that's just
one example the authors cited the intro
many others that have led to false
arrests of people because the biases
built into technology and speaking of
biases the authors go on to talk about
three different biases in relation to
data generation and then two biases
during a model stage so for data
generation there are historical
representation and measurement biases
and then for the model stage there are
evaluation and aggregation biases so i'm
going to read this quote from pages 5
and 6 which i think are important for
kind of understanding different types of
biases that do exist quote historical
bias happens when data is measured and
sampled in ways that reflect existing
biases in a world such as when zip codes
are used to decide mortgage rates which
are known to have biases due to
redlining representation bias occurs
when the development sample
underrepresents parts of the population
such as when the facial recognition
technology does not include enough
people with dark skin measurement bias
occurs when proxies are used to measure
constructs that are hard to measure such
as when recidivism softwares use
someone's address as measures of
riskiness when we know that communities
of color are highly policed aggregation
bias happens when a one-size-fits-all
model does not account for meaningful
characteristics and differences between
the subgroups in the population end
quote so a little bit further down on
page six the authors cite a paper by
joanna good at all which if you haven't
listened to the interview that i did
with joanna i highly recommend it i'll
include a link to that in the show notes
but in this they mentioned four
different types of biases related to
color blindness which is like saying oh
i don't see race i don't see color and
how that's problematic because it's like
well i you're probably saying that with
saying like oh well i'm not racist but
what that's ignoring is a lot of
contexts and hegemonic influences that
are disproportionately affecting people
of color in a way that might come across
as
kind of sweeping a problem under the rug
and just kind of ignoring it so here are
four ways that some computer science
teachers were actually engaging in
colorblind approaches
likely unintentionally so one was that
they felt that the lack of success or
participation in cs was due to
these students themselves and their
families the second one was engaging in
discourse that ignored race altogether
the third approach was that teachers
would engage in evasive discourse by
saying hey there's all these outside
barriers outside of my control that i
can't really work with whether it's like
school counselors
deciding who participates in cs etc and
then the fourth colorblind approach that
some teachers used was just being silent
which to be completely candid is a
category that i fell into it wasn't an
area of expertise of mine that i felt
knowledgeable enough to
engage in conversations on and i saw
that it led to a bunch of problematic
conversations with like family members
and colleagues etc and i quite frankly
avoid politics because it's just is
emotionally and mentally draining but i
realized that this silence that i was
engaging in could implicitly come across
as
being complacent with how things are and
so i made a very intentional effort of
being more public about my thoughts on
this and engaging in conversation that i
knew would lead to conflict when people
were saying hopefully unintentionally
some racist or problematic things and so
you may have noticed in the podcast if
you go all the way back to the i can't
breathe episode from that point on it
was much more overt much more public
about here are my perspectives on this
i'm likely still saying things that are
problematic but i want people to know
that i am open to discussing them and
learning about them and working through
them because i don't want to have biases
that are going unchecked etc so the
reason why i'm sharing this and trying
to be as candid as i can is because i
want anyone who's listening to this who
might be
hesitant about it to know that i was
there too and i've been
very vocal about equity issues in cs
education just list like if you go to
the tags in the show notes and look at
the equity tags there are a ton of
podcasts whether it's a solo episode
like this one or interviews with guests
and multiple guests and we have some
wonderful conversations around equity
that i wish the field was having more of
so to summarize the rant it's hey yes it
can be scary to talk about some things
especially when cancelled culture is
rampant but we need to find ways to
engage in these conversations even if
they're uncomfortable just remember that
silence is a privilege i as a white
individual had the opportunity to
disengage from these conversations
around racism and whatnot because i was
not being racially profiled whereas my
black and brown friends did not have
that privilege to say hey this is
causing me too much stress i don't want
to engage in this conversation because
they were drawn into it whether they
wanted to or not because of racism bias
etc and if you decide that you want to
explore this more again there's a ton of
resources in the different show notes
for the different podcasts and different
topics if you want to learn more about
racism and anti-racist practices like
the i can't breathe episode has a ton of
resources to take a look at so i'll link
to that in the show notes now near the
end of this particular subsection the
authors argue that to actually
accomplish this quote we need to move
away from training cs teachers through a
one-week professional development model
which leads to teachers with limited
computing knowledge and experience these
teachers then do not have the adequate
knowledge or agency to bring a critical
lens into cs education in summary we
cannot just focus on everyone learning
to code to drive profits for
capitalistic institutions instead we
need people learning to code in ways
that also push them to think more
critically about software technology and
design and that prepare them to help
reshape technology in service of human
liberation and ecological sustainability
a critical perspective will lead
students to question the harmful effects
of technologies and dismantle them if
needed end quote from page six that is a
very important quote and kind of
perfectly summarizes the point of this
subsection on criticality which is
basically saying hey even if you love it
we really need to engage in
conversations that problematizes
systemic barriers etc alright so the
final subsection within this particular
area of the paper is on citizenship and
so in this section they are arguing that
we need to move away from just focusing
on technical skills and focus on helping
students become good citizens and so
they cite some scholarship that says
that computer science majors are
actually don't feel like their roles
foster justice or solve global problems
or improve lives etc so this whole
section is basically arguing hey we need
to focus not just on the technology but
also the humanity and the impact of that
technology on humanity so this
particular section was interesting
because the way that it was framed it
was saying we need to bring the
humanities into cs which is interesting
to me because a lot of the discourse
around computational thinking in
particular is all about putting
computational thinking or cs into other
disciplines so it finally like flips
that narrative and says hey we can learn
a lot from other subject areas which is
something that i've been like arguing in
many of these unpacking scholarship
episodes and even interviews or talk
about like one of the most valuable
things i've done is read outside of the
field it literally led to me being able
to switch to a different field because i
was reading outside of music education
so much that i was able to jump into
computer science education because i
have this background in multiple subject
areas in different areas of expertise it
has allowed me to synthesize different
ideas that are not discussed within each
domain like when i'm speaking music
educators i can talk about things that
are common practice in computer science
that are rarely discussed for music
education and vice versa so
this really resonates with me in terms
of looking into other domains like they
mentioned civics instruction in cs and
how we could learn from civics teachers
social studies teachers etc to figure
out how to bring in topics that are
current
into the content that we are learning so
here's a quote from page seven quote
this requires curriculum standards that
focus on humanities and citizenship
encouraging cs students as civic
understanding when developing
technologies and challenging
techno-solutionist understandings of
technology which failed to consider
systemic oppression end quote so the
authors actually suggest on page seven
that hey we need to revise standards to
focus on these critical citizenship
approaches so here's another quote from
page seven quote taking cues from the
fields of social studies which works
toward participatory citizenship in
democracy and citizen science advocates
who aim toward participation
democratization justice and equity
through community-based knowledge we
propose cs pedagogy oriented toward
inquiry in action end quote that to me
can come from like a very
student-centered approach in terms of
what are you interested in learning more
about what do you wonder about how can
we explore that in your own learning but
then the second word is the action of
okay how can we actually do something
about this how can we improve things if
we notice some biases all right let's
try and actively address those biases
and if we can't do it let's find the
people who can rather than just learning
concepts for the sake of learning
concepts let's do something with our
understandings so at the very end of
this section on citizenship there are
four suggestions in here in terms of
like students working with their
communities to figure out a community
challenge students partnering with their
communities as like citizen scientists
to gather some data students then
partnering with communities to
co-develop solutions to these identified
problems and then students actually
taking some kind of informed action so
you can read more about that on page
eight alright so this paper ends with a
very short conclusion this is only about
eight pages long but again i highlighted
more than i did not so i had to leave so
much out of this i highly recommend
going and reading this particular paper
i've already cited it for an upcoming
publication and it just came out like a
week or two ago at the end of all these
unpacking scholarship episodes i'd like
to talk about some lingering questions
or thoughts that i had when i read
through the paper so one of them is how
might we integrate ethical design
principles into learning cs content so
there's this tendency to take like this
add-on justice approach where it's like
oh well we've got our normal content so
let's just do like an additional unit
that's specifically on social justice or
equity or ethics or whatever but instead
of doing like a unit or a class on
ethics how could we embed or integrate
ethical design principles into learning
of cs content so if this paper resonated
with you and you're like yeah i want to
focus on this more i want to engage in
more practices that dismantle
systemic barriers of oppression etc
awesome find some way that you can do
this in each one of the projects rather
than making a standalone project that is
like okay now we're gonna do our bias
project and then we'll get back to our
regular scheduled content whatever i
don't really have a good answer to how
you might integrate it and the reason
why is because it just depends on what
you're learning like an approach that i
might use in an ap class with an
assigned curriculum might be different
than an approach that i would use in the
interest driven class that i previously
facilitated where students could pick
multiple programming languages and
platforms etc to create projects that
were interesting to them we could frame
it around questions that solve real
world problems or address biases etc
however this leads to a question that i
often get when i read through stuff like
this even though this heavily resonates
with me i
wonder when might a focus on one image
of curriculum within a field or domain
become a form of colonization and i
don't have a good answer this i've been
asking this for quite some time but to
clarify in case you haven't heard the
podcasts that i did on images of
curriculum so curricula can be conceived
of as the content or subject matter or
maybe it's a program to plan activities
or intended learning outcomes it could
be a form of cultural reproduction or an
experience or a set of discrete tasks
and concepts as carrer which i talk
about in the podcast on that if you
don't you're not familiar with that or
it could be conceived of as an agenda
for social reconstruction among many
other things i would argue that the
authors are suggesting that all cs
curricula and pedagogy should be an
agenda for social reconstruction and
while i agree that we could certainly do
that and this would certainly help out
society i also wonder is this a form of
colonizing axiologies and epistemologies
colonizing values or ways of learning or
knowing or understanding and this
question is not posed as a critique of
the authors because again i agree with
what they're saying it's just me
thinking out loud so an example that i
came up with for this is i like to cook
if the recipe were considered to be like
a lesson or a curriculum i would say
that most recipes are discrete tasks and
concepts or program plan activities or
even like intended edible outcomes just
kind of play with rephrasing the images
of curriculum however if a recipe were
viewed as an agenda for social
reconstruction then it might be a recipe
that teaches you all about the harm done
through the spice trade but that might
not match the interest of somebody who
is just trying to make some delicious
waffles so while i agree that curricula
can and should be an agenda for social
reconstruction i just don't know if that
should be that in all use cases again i
think we could embed it throughout so
much of what we do but i just imagine
that there are some use cases i think
where maybe that's not what people want
i don't know though an example that i
can think of is when i was very
depressed i wanted to
attend music classes because it took my
mind off of the societal issues that
were going on that were exacerbating my
depression and suicidality at the time
so if i instead attended a music class
where it was forced to confront societal
issues within the medium of music i
don't know if that would have helped me
at that time and it may have turned me
away from music which i ended up
pursuing for multiple degrees so i'm
sharing this publicly to say like while
i agree with it i wonder what the
pushback would be if the entire field
were to flip over to this would it then
push some people away from the field who
are more interested in other images of
curriculum than
just engaging in social reconstruction
but i don't know i am a fan of
multi-perspectivalism i spoke about this
in the interview with mark gustile that
i did which was a great interview i
recommend listening to that i've also
talked about it in the unpacking
scholarship episode i did on gilsky's
concept of methodology which is
basically like when you blindly follow a
method at the exclusion of all others so
like if you're
a constructionist basically ignoring
constructivism or even behaviorism or
whatever like other ways of knowing and
learning for myself being a
multi-perspectivalist i think that there
are many different approaches that are
appropriate for different contexts and
even for different individuals anyways i
enjoyed this paper i recommend taking a
look at it and i'm going to talk about
another paper that i co-authored in two
weeks so stay tuned for that and also
stay tuned next week for an interview
but until then i hope you're all staying
safe and are having a wonderful week
Article
Yadav, A. & Heath, M. K. (2022). “Breaking the code: Confronting racism in computer science through community criticality, and citizenship.” In TechTrends, pp. 1-9.
Abstract
“The unexamined power and prejudice embedded within technologies and societies has led to direct harm to individuals of color, minoritized groups, and the US ideal of a multi-racial democracy. Rather than an accident of AI or a “glitch” of the system, these inequities highlight the invisible and oppressive architecture – a “New Jim Code” (Benjamin, 2019) – encoded into the bones of the technology. At the same time, computer science education has grown considerably over the last decade. We ask how can educators address embedded injustice within the K-12 CS education? Using information asymmetry (Hippel, 2005) as a conceptual framing, we argue for the need to address racialized and patriarchal biases through curricular design and teaching in CS. We argue for a participatory and community centered approach to CS curricula which facilitates community co-designed CS, centers criticality, and fosters civic education within CS.”
My One Sentence Summary
This article articulates some biases in CS curricular design and pedagogy, then provides three suggestions for teaching CS as an agenda for social reconstruction.
Some Of My Lingering Questions/Thoughts
How might we integrate ethical design principles into learning CS content?
When might a focus on one image of curriculum within a field or domain become a form of colonization?
Resources/Links Relevant to This Episode
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