Exploring Computer Science with Joanna Goode

In this interview with Joanna Goode, we discuss corporate influence through neoliberal practices in CS education, reflecting on engaging all students in CS programs, considerations around equity and inclusion in CS education, layers of curriculum design and implementation, discussing and problematizing integration, influences of policy and administrative support (or the lack of) on CS education, Joanna’s experience with developing Exploring Computer Science, and much more.

  • Welcome back to another episode of the

    CSK8 podcast

    my name is jared o'leary in this week's

    interview i am chatting with joanna

    goode

    in our discussion we talk about

    corporate influence through neoliberal

    practices

    in computer science education we also

    discuss reflecting on

    engaging all students in computer

    science programs

    some considerations around equity and

    inclusion in cs education

    various layers of curriculum design and

    implementation

    and how those often don't always align

    discussing and problematizing

    integration

    some of the influences of policy and

    administrative support or the lack of

    as well as joanna's experience with

    developing the curriculum

    called exploring computer science you

    can find a link to that curriculum

    in the show notes as well as links to

    many other resources such as other

    podcasts on similar topics

    and so much more define that by going to

    jaredoleary.com or clicking the link in

    your show notes

    i really hope you enjoyed this interview

    i was nodding my head vigorously while

    listening to joanna

    as much as what she described is very

    much so in alignment with my approach to

    curriculum and experience design

    all right so we will now begin this

    interview with an introduction

    by joanna good morning i am joanna good

    professor of education studies at the

    college of education

    at the university of oregon i'm on the

    kalapuya

    elihi the ancestral land of the calipuya

    today

    i come to the university of oregon

    originally from california

    and i began my scholarly career

    at ucla i was a applied math major

    specialization with computing love the

    computing

    programming parts of mathematics so took

    some extra courses there

    i have always loved teaching and being a

    teacher in various ways and i knew

    education was somewhere in my future so

    i entered the teacher education program

    at ucla became a high school

    mathematics computer science teacher for

    five years

    before returning to graduate school and

    working on my phd

    in urban schooling also at ucla

    so i come today as a

    researcher as a former high school

    classroom teacher

    i also work in teacher education and

    as i'm keenly aware of on a daily basis

    i'm also a parent of three children who

    are now zoom schooling

    as we speak oh how things have changed

    yes if you were to write a book about

    your journey up until now in cs

    education what would the

    title of the chapters be this is a great

    question

    i think the first chapter would be

    called

    making and making do a story of my

    childhood experiences

    i grew up with immigrant parents who

    were

    middle class maybe lower middle class in

    terms

    of their early careers but very much

    tinkers my dad was an auto mechanic

    my mother was a seamstress my mother

    ended up being an accountant and taking

    some programming classes on the side

    my dad built candy cane lane decorations

    in our local neighborhood

    merry-go-rounds and carousels and

    interactive robots

    without having any digital knowledge so

    all mechanically

    designed and he was out of school at 14

    in post-world war ii england

    and didn't have much of a formal

    education and yet could create

    all these innovative tools these

    creations if you will

    and it was all about the children so it

    was all about supporting kids

    making them smile have fun and so that

    was my upbringing was this

    really lovely making hands-on

    seeing what materials you have around

    the house and

    using those to create and

    that leads us to chapter two which i

    would say would be when my dad brought

    home a commodore 64.

    they were on sale at kmart that

    christmas my dad said

    i don't know what it is exactly but i

    know it's going to be important let me

    put it in the corner of the storage room

    and i was the person in the family who

    sort of went back there and

    started coding and learned a little bit

    about the commodore 64. but

    that was a really important moment in

    our family to

    have that investment and to see the

    promise

    not really understand the promise but to

    see that promise of what this personal

    computer might be able to do

    right and the joy of it being sold at

    kmart was extra special because

    it was seen as something much more for

    the people than

    something that was at a specialty

    technology store for example

    i think the next chapter of this journey

    through cs education

    might be the myth of access in cs

    education

    i had the luxury of one semester of

    programming class in sixth grade

    it was during the 1980s it was a little

    trend at the time

    but it was a required elective for all

    students and i didn't

    realize until much later what a gift

    that was

    to just have that initial exposure and

    so when i

    tinkered in computing through college i

    recognized that i was one

    of very few women in those courses

    none of my friends run those courses it

    felt chilly i thought about that i

    didn't realize the systemic inequities

    and then when i went to teach high

    school and i thought great i'll sign up

    to be

    the computer science teacher the other

    teacher was retiring he was well on his

    way out

    and i thought hey if i'm the role model

    and i can

    start a recruitment plan and i can

    create this access of this incredibly

    diverse high school

    maybe things will change and what i

    learned was

    my individual efforts made small changes

    they weren't making these systemic

    changes that i knew

    were really important part of that

    school environment i was

    very fortunate to be under the

    leadership of principal dr

    sylvia rousseau who was a remarkable

    educator member of the community she's

    about five feet tall

    soft-spoken black woman she was

    trilingual i think and

    we had some major problems at our school

    but she was doing restorative justice

    before we really had that language

    and it was a school-wide restorative

    justice on a variety

    of incidents from some of the gang

    violence around the school

    to also the tracking that was going on

    with our classes and the role of

    teachers within that so we had inquiry

    groups

    we were examining our own practices and

    this computer science

    piece was just so important that i

    knew it had such power and privilege

    associated with it

    but most of the discourse around

    tracking was about mathematics and

    ap history and so forth so i knew

    something was there

    and i thank dr rousseau for encouraging

    me to

    go on to graduate school to explore this

    further from a scholarly perspective

    but also with the experience of real

    classroom teaching

    right and struggling with these issues

    with my colleagues not as an individual

    venture

    from there i would say the next chapter

    is stuck in the shallow end

    which is maybe a book at that point i

    bumped into jane margolis and

    and she was in the finishing touches of

    her first book

    unlocking the clubhouse while we met and

    writing this grant to

    explore computer science in k-12

    or high schools specifically around

    race and gender and access the next

    chapter would be it's all about the

    teachers

    because i feel that after stuck in the

    shallow end came out one of the

    major takeaways was the tremendous

    influence that teachers have not only in

    their classroom settings

    but also the agency that they can have

    for

    addressing inequities at the school

    level that it's not just administrators

    making decisions top

    down it's teachers collectively deciding

    on curriculum

    and professional development and

    supporting one another

    and so i think the teachers has been

    a major focus of mine both in the

    teacher education work but also in the

    research

    in recent years because of the

    importance that

    those teachers play and i think

    maybe now i'm in a phase of look out for

    the sharks

    i feel like there's a lot of easy

    solutions for an incredibly

    complex problem around access and equity

    in computing education

    i think we increasingly need to name

    neoliberalism we need to think hard

    about the approaches that we have

    and relationships with corporations and

    how

    those might influence which children and

    which education they're getting

    i think increasingly i'm probably myself

    with naming whiteness and patriarchy

    in every single step of our curriculum

    pedagogy policies it's everywhere and

    until we can

    sort of move from the deficit nature of

    why aren't those underrepresented

    kids groups in here and start saying

    well

    why might they not want to be here

    yes that's going to start i think moving

    the conversation

    and then ultimately i hope we end up

    with a chapter called

    computing as literacy for justice that

    computing

    becomes seen as not a one

    course or one lesson but as a literacy

    that we fundamentally believe every

    child

    every community person every adult even

    deserves to

    have as part of their engagement with

    society and with one another

    yeah i like that it sounds like the work

    that you're doing like

    you're going for effect size in terms of

    the impact that you want to have

    maybe i'm projecting like why i

    initially went into getting a phd but

    like

    when i was in the classroom i was like

    this is great i'm able to have an impact

    on a few hundred kids but then i was

    like but

    what if i worked with teachers then i'd

    indirectly be having an impact on

    thousands of kids

    and then like when i'm working at the

    non-profit right now like we're

    working with a million more kids this

    year so like the impact is like it's

    indirect but like it's much bigger than

    i would have had staying in the

    classroom

    am i projecting or is that also related

    to your approach i think that's exactly

    right and i think it doesn't come with

    some loss though because i think of

    those relationships i had with my high

    school students

    and certainly i have relationships with

    teachers i work with but

    there is a different sort of engagement

    with the work

    so i think of impact in terms of the

    numbers but

    i also you know in true honesty missed

    some of that

    individual deep 180 days

    worth of instruction impact with

    students right but yes

    i think that is an accurate summary of

    growing

    sort of zooming out and thinking more

    systemically about

    impact through believing and supporting

    classroom educators in particular one of

    the other things that caught my

    ear was your mention of neoliberalism

    and the impact of

    corporation on education so i wrote a

    co-authored a paper for a music

    education journal that talked about

    neoliberalism in relation to music

    technology and how

    the hardware that we use and the

    software that we use are being designed

    by people who

    aren't educators who don't have

    experience in the classroom who

    are selling us things for their own gain

    without taking into account how people

    are using them

    and so we kind of unpack like there are

    people who are

    taking the hardware and going well i

    wanted to do this instead so i'm going

    to modify it and there are people who

    are taking software and doing the same

    thing or they're creating their own

    hardware and their own software

    so like it's circumventing the

    narrative of everything has to come from

    a corporation and saying yeah well what

    if i want to modify it to do this

    could you expand upon what does

    neoliberalism look like in relation to

    cs education

    and what might we as educators actually

    do to combat that

    yeah great question i think in cs

    education

    i think neoliberalism for me falls

    in answering some of the questions that

    we should be asking

    for example who created this and for

    what purpose

    is one question who is paying for this

    and what do they hope to get

    out of this when they're paying for this

    and do i even know who i can ask these

    questions

    of and then i also think that there's a

    move to individualize and to make things

    about individual choice or

    personalization or data analytics being

    faster better somehow more effective

    and we just don't have the research on

    that what we do know from the research

    is that learning

    is a social practice that we do with

    other people

    not something that is customized by data

    analytics

    being measured so i think we can see

    some of the results of these products

    often

    having promises about their

    effectiveness which

    are not based in any sort of data or if

    they are they're based in the analytics

    from the same company itself so in some

    ways we don't put

    those innovations through the same

    scrutiny that we even do for a social

    studies textbook if you will

    right and then i think we're you know

    increasingly asking

    students to turn over their personal

    data to these

    corporations that gives me some pause

    one of the most close to home examples

    of this right now

    is that our state has decided to require

    an edtpa

    exam at the end of our teacher education

    program so even though these students

    have come in and they've taken their

    tests

    they've done their student teaching

    they've passed all their courses

    they still have to videotape themselves

    fill out

    prompts send it away to a company

    pay that company an extra three or four

    hundred dollars these are pre-service

    teachers

    trying to make it through a graduate

    program they don't have a lot of extra

    funds

    and then it's an extra few hundred

    dollars to

    a corporation to externally score it and

    send it back to them

    about whether or not that they can

    become

    a teacher so the stakes are very high

    and what's been particularly insidious

    is that this exam like many others that

    occur across k-12 keep our teachers of

    color

    from getting teaching licenses so our

    indigenous

    teachers are having a harder time

    passing this our native spanish

    language speakers are not passing a

    spanish-speaking portion

    and those are our teachers who we hope

    might become computing teachers

    or diversify the teaching force and then

    so you can look at it through who do we

    allow to

    be the teachers in these classrooms who

    what are some of the neoliberal forces

    that allow a

    superintendent and a test taking company

    make

    a curriculum deal that trickles down

    that may or may not be a good idea

    yeah so i think we have lots of those

    examples about what happens when

    decision making is made at the top

    it doesn't bring in educators who

    know the communities no teaching and

    learning no curriculum

    and ultimately you know answering those

    questions about who is benefiting

    and what do they hope to grow out of

    this

    i think in computer science specifically

    what is truly problematic is that

    we're often funding in terms of this

    illusion of a pipeline or

    the idea that we're you know these

    people are investing in computer science

    education

    they're not investing in literature or

    language arts right

    because they're hoping to have a more

    technologically knowledgeable workforce

    and so on they're not concerned with

    the struggling students in the class

    they're concerned with the top

    you know creating conditions that will

    be their future workforce that are the

    cream of the crop

    right so in some ways we start

    reproducing the social norms of

    technology industry

    which have those characteristics of

    whiteness and patriarchy

    and so i think that neoliberal cycle of

    having these same corporations fund

    schools

    fund programs and then hope that those

    people come back

    into that same industry and

    you know perpetuate some of the

    inequities and exclusions that we see in

    the field

    what led to your interest in access and

    equity

    and wanting to research in particular

    underrepresented students of color and

    females etc

    i think it really was as a classroom

    teacher when i was

    cycling between my 7 20 a.m

    ap computer science class which you know

    talk about structurally by design

    excluding people it was a zero period

    and i would go from that space and it

    was

    almost all white and asian boys

    and one or two girls the first year

    and then i'd pop into my repeat algebra

    class first period

    down the hall and it would be almost all

    boys again

    a few girls but those students were

    majority latinx and black boys in that

    classroom

    and then i was coaching the swim team

    and i was thinking

    how are these spaces so gendered and so

    racialized and it's so norm and we are

    in one of the most progressive schools

    around

    with a strong social justice leader

    something is going on here and why isn't

    anybody

    looking at this systematically like this

    was my college experience so i know it's

    happening

    and really the only literature or

    readings i could find was a little

    early digital divide about access to

    computers

    and the internet nobody was talking

    about access to computing knowledge

    certainly not in the k-12 space i think

    the last part was i went to one of the

    college four trainings around the ap

    computer science test designed to help

    bring people in and prepare people and

    it just

    this was not a topic of conversation and

    i remember feeling

    so disconnected from some of the

    professional discourse with my colleague

    teachers

    around our equity justice center

    pedagogy and then

    what computer science felt like and

    that really propelled me towards

    graduate school to figure out really

    what was going

    on with computing as a field that it

    could create such conditions that this

    would become so

    normalized nobody would even point it

    out as

    segregation really and were you

    interested

    in and aware of like liberatory

    pedagogical practices before

    meeting your principal or did they

    introduce you to

    this different approach to education

    that's often not talked about

    yeah so i was fortunate that ucla

    had a great relationship with a high

    school that i

    worked at so the placement was

    purposeful

    and my teacher education mentor

    dr barbara wells she was a math educator

    but she really brought in a much more

    liberatory

    education piece as a math educator so

    she gave me a lot of the language and a

    lot of the background

    and really some of that real talk about

    okay well you're

    saying these things or you want to

    have this impact what is your pedagogy

    going to do

    in math education to get you there with

    these students

    you're teaching this repeat algebra

    class what are you doing differently

    than what happened last year so that

    they're not repeating a third time

    so these conversations were very much a

    part of my training

    i was very fortunate to have both her

    and dr sylvia

    so these two very strong black women

    educators who themselves had lots of

    experience in the classroom and

    leadership

    really setting that foundation for what

    it means to be a good teacher

    and a good teacher isn't concerned with

    the top 50

    of the class a good teacher is concerned

    with the children in the classroom

    yeah it sounds like you're in a very

    fortunate place

    and space to be able to explore those

    topics and whatnot

    there are a lot of places that i know

    education wise

    you're not able to do that whether it's

    because of the kids you work with it's

    too homogenized for different reasons or

    because of the teacher education program

    you go into they just simply don't talk

    about this they focus on pedagogy that

    is not related to liberatory pedagogy

    and whatnot

    so that sounds wonderful that you had

    that i'm curious so i did the unpacking

    scholarship episode of that paper that

    you wrote from 2008 that was like kind

    of talking about well what are some

    strategies that we can do

    to get access and equity and like try

    and improve

    some of those areas but what has changed

    or kind of remained the same in those

    last 12 or so years since you

    wrote that paper in terms of

    recommendations that you would give

    sure so i think actually in rereading

    that paper

    and listening to your podcast it was fun

    to revisit some of the ideas and to see

    what's aged and what has not aged

    ipods are out so that is one technology

    that

    is not familiar but i would revisit a

    few

    of the ideas and maybe deepen them with

    some

    systemic understandings i think this was

    written a little bit more

    for teachers themselves but i think that

    critical bificality of what can i do in

    the classroom

    with learners and also what is the more

    systemic

    influences and rather than say i can't

    you know that's not for me here's my

    walls to think about those two

    together so i might add you know

    over the past 12 years that recruitment

    looks different i think

    we want to have much more of a

    school-wide responsibility not on one

    teacher to do

    so much of that labor of recruitment

    so how can school counselors

    have their own education programs like

    counselors for computing

    administrators and have a common

    understanding

    about who computing is for everybody and

    how the school should recruit

    or put place students in particular

    classes or

    settings maybe as computer science

    becomes for

    all we don't have to talk about

    recruitment that would also be a hope

    because

    we don't talk about recruiting for

    algebra

    we place students in mathematics classes

    right

    we do some tracking there but we place

    students in those classes we don't have

    to recruit it's because it's still

    considered an enrichment project which

    for many people in richmond

    signals is sort of privileged people

    that belong in that class

    so that's one point i think another

    piece would be for pedagogy powerful

    pedagogy

    i would also ask teachers and educators

    to consider

    having some goals and metrics so that

    they can hold themselves accountable for

    that pedagogy

    what does it mean to make sure that

    english language learners are involved

    or how are students with special

    accommodations

    learning the conceptual knowledge so

    really thinking about engaging all

    students not

    just from that pedagogy perspective but

    that how do i know i'm doing what i

    think i'm doing i think there's always

    room for reflection there

    myself included you videotape yourself

    one time you'll see those areas for

    growth

    i think having some goals so you know

    what to look for

    can be really helpful otherwise it's

    improving but not really knowing

    if you are or not one of the things that

    i'd probably add on to

    like the metrics that you look at one of

    the things that you can look at is more

    qualitative in terms of well what do

    students actually

    perceive are they enjoying this class

    well why are they enjoying this what do

    they not like about the subject area and

    like

    diving into that is a thing that you

    look into not just what are they

    learning but like

    do they want to continue their learning

    when the class is over

    that's exactly right do they feel like a

    part of this classroom learning

    community

    right what a powerful thing and how do

    you measure that that's exactly right

    and being purposeful and intentional in

    what that looks like

    because kids don't necessarily remember

    learning loops

    on a tuesday of february they remember

    how they felt in that classroom and how

    they felt as a learner

    and how they were treated by the teacher

    and other students

    and i think keeping that in mind you

    know feelings are hard to measure

    but just being mindful can help

    that ecosystem a little bit more

    carefully what about

    some strategies around equity and access

    in today's world so we have all these

    virtual environments that people are

    learning computer science through zoom

    et cetera like

    do you have recommendations for that

    that are specific to that kind of

    environment because

    like it's much easier to see now oh this

    kit doesn't have

    stable internet connection or this kit

    doesn't even have a device like

    things that were occurring outside of

    the classroom

    are now much more obvious to a lot of

    classroom teachers to go oh

    they actually don't have the ability to

    go home and work on this for a b

    or c reasons yes it's an impossible

    situation

    jared i'm not sure that equity

    issues are so bright

    right now it's blinding in a way that

    if you go one direction there's

    excluding

    people if you go another direction

    you're excluding people

    i think the major equity issue that i've

    seen

    so far is not taking care of teachers

    that teachers are the ones who would be

    able to

    put together the packet for students who

    need the packet

    and they're also the ones to deliver the

    synchronous instruction for the students

    who

    that's the way they're thriving and

    that's the best situation

    they're also the best ones to create

    that learning environment the teachers

    are everything

    and yet we've asked them to do much more

    with brand new tools with very little

    support

    and the teachers who are feeling that in

    particular

    are the ones in school systems which

    have already struggled

    with inequities and overworking teachers

    particularly

    bipod communities and bypoc teachers

    and families teachers with caretaking

    responsibilities

    so i think for students were very

    very aware of digital divide issues

    we're not so aware

    of the other issues going on at home

    because we just don't know

    what other family issues are and whether

    it's students

    you know needing to remember to log on

    themselves because their

    parents aren't home or if there's mental

    health issues i think teachers

    have a hard time knowing exactly what's

    going on which is part of the challenge

    but i suspect that if we had smaller

    class sizes and

    extra helpers with those educators it

    would make the job

    more doable so if we don't expect that

    teachers who used to have 35 students

    are now

    delivering instruction in multiple ways

    for 35

    students maybe three different ways

    that's a big task

    what if we put more funds towards

    doubling those teachers so i think

    the equity issues are everywhere

    in everything however i think the way to

    have the biggest impact in addressing

    some of those

    equity issues are investing in the

    professional learning

    and some professional planning time for

    teachers so they're not working around

    the clock

    and burning themselves out yeah that's

    one of the reasons why i asked like the

    question

    towards the end of the interviews like

    how do you take care of yourself and

    like release a super cut of that

    in september for like national suicide

    prevention month because like

    this is a very real thing that as

    educators we need to focus on is

    how to prevent that i'm curious i like

    talking through ideas where it's like oh

    i thought this was going to work really

    well but it ended up not

    what ideas have you had or heard around

    like

    equity and access that like on paper

    sounded like it was gonna go great and

    then

    it didn't in implementation for whatever

    reason a lot of the

    equity and access that is around

    particular programs or courses

    that either are not sustaining over time

    and here i go again do not have that

    professional development piece

    really give me pause and the reason why

    is it's really easy to say somebody

    watched a webinar

    and now 1.5 million people are impacted

    but what we know is that to change

    teacher practice it takes

    you know a year and a half 80 plus more

    hours of sustained engagement

    arguably a learning community that

    over time that fosters that improvement

    so i think the idea that this is an easy

    fix

    and if we just came up with a new

    curriculum or a new

    ap class or a new outreach project

    or if we just you know made this

    program with some more keen advertising

    i think that doesn't necessarily have

    that

    long sustained impact it might

    we just don't have any evidence of it so

    all those great ideas

    i often look at people's commitments and

    i'm struck by

    the level of care and

    great ideas that go into those

    programs or approaches but i often

    pause and think well how do we know if

    there's actual

    impact for all that work and great ideas

    are they actually getting out there and

    how do we know

    and so i think without having some of

    that classroom based research this is

    where i think research and practice are

    really nice

    and complementary without having the

    research to

    mirror back to practitioners program

    people curriculum developers to say this

    is what's working this is what

    teachers might be struggling with or

    might need more preparation

    or might say this doesn't fit and we

    need to

    retool i think when that communication

    is open

    and that design process is more

    longitudinal that's when i have a little

    bit more hope that things will stick

    over time

    yeah i hope so and what you just

    described really resonates with like our

    approach to professional development so

    like

    we do district-wide implementation if

    you're interested in like just doing an

    after school or

    gifted talented class like no that's not

    what we do when we do it it's

    no this is not a one-off workshop and

    all of a sudden you're gonna know

    everything you need to know about cs

    education like we go for a minimum of a

    year

    ideally two to three years of

    professional development every quarter

    would come back

    like hey we learned this new thing how

    did it go all right now we're going to

    dive deeper and learn something else

    and one of the things that we've noticed

    with districts is it's often

    like in the second year in particular

    when they start going

    oh this thing that we've been exploring

    it can actually be done with kids and

    like now that you've modeled it with my

    kids now i actually believe you

    like so all these little things you have

    to go into place to make it so the

    teachers will actually buy into it and

    doing like a one-off webinar like while

    that's nice it's not going to solve like

    these equity and access issues

    or whatever you're trying to focus on

    yes

    i'm nodding vigorously because exactly

    the same experience we have

    one lesson in the exploring computer

    science curriculum the cornrows lesson

    it's built off of ron eglash's

    culturally situated design tools

    well we first started incorporating this

    lesson in our professional development

    program

    because the first couple years after

    this curriculum was released in los

    angeles our teachers reported that that

    was one of the lessons they were not

    really teaching because they didn't

    quite know how we thought

    that makes it a great candidate for one

    of these teaching lessons

    where teachers practice teaching the

    lessons to one another in the

    professional development

    we have a discussion about the lesson

    after it's taught

    and so we've started incorporating it

    into the lessons

    and what we've learned is when those

    second

    year teachers return for professional

    development

    they start having the conversation along

    with the first year teachers who are

    say things like well i don't know if i

    should teach this i'm in an all-white

    community

    or i'm a black teacher and i'm in a

    you know majority white community and i

    don't know if i feel safe teaching this

    what are some strategies i might use and

    suddenly we have these second year

    teachers in the room saying

    last year i felt just like you but i

    tried it and here's what i did

    and it wasn't scary after all and

    actually my students have

    you know responded how happy they were

    to

    a be in the curriculum because back to

    whiteness we default to whiteness and

    don't name that

    but we named the one lesson on cornrows

    is

    something maybe scary or troubling to

    teach in a computer science

    public school classroom and so we have

    these great conversations

    but it's because those second year

    teachers are saying

    i did this here some strategies the

    first year teachers are starting to name

    some of their discomforts

    working through that coming up with a

    pedagogical plan

    and then they become sort of that

    mentors in the community

    the following year and i think that's

    really an example

    of if we did this sort of lesson or

    curriculum

    and just handed it out and didn't have

    that long-term professional growth

    we could say this is in the curriculum

    but we could probably also conclude that

    very few teachers would feel prepared to

    teach it

    and so being in the curriculum is fairly

    useless if it's not enacted

    by teachers and i think that's that fine

    point

    we don't say often enough about what is

    the enacted curriculum in the classroom

    not the designed curriculum

    but is the enacted curriculum i'm glad

    you brought that up one of the

    unpacking scholarship episodes i did was

    talking about how those are the

    different layers like there's the

    intended there's the enacted

    there's the embodied there's like all

    these layers of curriculum that you have

    to like get into and it's like well what

    was design

    versus what was taught versus what was

    understood versus what is like

    embodied later on like what is the

    hidden implications that were

    unintentionally taught like these are

    the layers i love to nerd out on when it

    comes to designing curriculum and

    thinking about them

    like after the fact but oddly enough

    like not enough people in css are

    talking about that like it's like oh i

    made this new fancy shiny thing

    okay but like there's a lot more to this

    people have been talking about this for

    a very long time you should look at the

    scholarship on it well i think that for

    so long in our community

    computer science has been king so to

    speak

    that the content knowledge has almost

    been weaponized

    to keep out people who know about

    teaching and learning

    you weren't a major in this so step

    aside i went to stanford

    let me create something and you teachers

    go do it because

    computer science is everything and i

    think

    that as a field we are not

    very welcoming of other expertise

    that doesn't begin with a college major

    in computer science

    yeah which perpetuates the patriarchy

    and whiteness because it becomes a

    barrier to even be in k-12

    cs education when it becomes weaponized

    as

    you don't really know let us do the

    curriculum pieces

    because we know what this field is about

    yeah that's a really important point

    i'm glad you brought that up i'm curious

    taking it back to like individual

    classroom

    educator they love computer science they

    want to

    do it in their class or their school

    their district etc what advice would you

    give

    for them to try and kind of develop

    these grassroots movements to

    implement cs across the district or

    school or even just a class

    one of the first pieces would be to have

    a

    team or a coalition of people

    so again it's not all the work all the

    institutional work on one educator

    i think what happens is that one

    educator

    has the vision designs the vision enacts

    the vision

    and then might leave schools or retire

    or do something else and

    then we have no sustainability plan so i

    think

    the first piece is to really make sure

    that it

    is an effort that involves some school

    and district people and not just person

    and with that i would say that part of

    that team

    should be people who are already focused

    on equity and inclusion efforts

    because if those people aren't part of

    the design team they have that expert

    knowledge about what works

    they run those programs and if we're

    really

    committed to equity inclusion then those

    are the first people at the table

    along with the counselors and

    administration so that you have

    that administrative support along with

    the teacher

    knowledge as well so i think having that

    team is really critical for the

    perspectives and for the sustainability

    and that equity focus i think equity

    and anti-racism has to be at the

    heart of any efforts it cannot be an

    add-on otherwise

    we've baked whiteness into the cake and

    added a little diversity frosting and

    [Music]

    that doesn't quite work in terms of

    changing the flavor of what we're trying

    to do i think

    so i think that's really it's about the

    people and about

    that commitment from the beginning and

    then i think at that level

    once those people are in place really

    thinking carefully

    about what curriculum and what

    professional

    supports are available that meet the

    needs of the community

    of the grade bands and of

    the particular students and teachers i

    think that will probably look different

    i think it

    will be cool when we have more

    place-based examples

    of what computing can look like i think

    one

    really exciting place is to have

    teachers plan together

    one teacher can't do all that

    interdisciplinary work but a few

    teachers

    with shared students can do amazing

    things and i think

    computing really gives lots of different

    options for interdisciplinary work

    when we have those content sort of

    teachers at the table to think through

    what that means

    so that might be one fun approach to

    begin of course there's curriculum

    that is already out there that has that

    professional development

    if it's a good fit for people but i

    wouldn't necessarily start

    there it's starting with the people and

    needs assessment of the particular

    school and community and how computing

    can help propel probably some of their

    already existing goals and initiatives

    rather than be

    one more mandate type policy that has to

    be

    you know checked off something that's

    more organic

    and meets the needs of the students and

    community

    do you have advice specifically for

    teachers who

    are like experts in other subject areas

    who want to

    also engage with or incorporate computer

    science in particular

    yeah i think one is to if they have a

    computer science teacher

    or colleague to buddy up that's always a

    good plan

    and if not i think there are

    increasingly

    programs that will start to give

    teachers these interdisciplinary ways of

    thinking about computing

    but i think you know not so many are as

    focused in that formal education

    i think what's missing and what makes it

    difficult to give advice

    is how do you tell a teacher who has 24

    mandates

    in six other subject areas how to get

    started

    with a seventh subject area and so

    getting started might have to be what

    are you already teaching out how can you

    layer and infuse computing within that

    so

    you're teaching about the election let's

    talk about modeling

    you're teaching about social studies

    let's talk about

    archival processes and different forms

    of media

    and there's lots of ways in

    frankly maybe this is my bias as a

    teacher educator

    we're not going to be able to give pd to

    all

    existing in-service k-12 teachers

    and if we do a little five minutes for

    everybody means

    nobody for everybody so i hope that

    pre-service teacher education

    departments like my own

    are really taking this seriously and

    thinking about

    how are we preparing and infusing this

    throughout all of our courses

    how is this computing education

    replacing the old

    edtech you know they don't need to learn

    how to use smart boards

    they're beyond that we can do other

    things and i think that's really the

    place where we're going to be able to

    start exploring ideas because

    the cohort of math educators are

    learning and talking about math together

    and also getting a little computing

    and the science educators are talking

    about science together and thinking

    about computing

    and the way we've set up education in

    the united states once they go out to

    schools

    most schools districts provide little if

    if any professional development so this

    is the place where

    a lot of those professional

    conversations and dispositions are being

    seeded

    and it's not too late obviously growth

    mindset teachers are

    lifelong learners but it's a much easier

    investment if you will to think about

    infusing this knowledge within this new

    cohort

    of teachers who are going to go out to

    the schools each year

    but that's a very slow process in terms

    of educational reform it's a hard nut to

    crack because i don't know how else we

    do it without a lot of one-offs

    and if we look at the history of

    education in the united states

    the one-offs will always benefit the

    privileged

    so we do it systemically we're going to

    grow computer science and we are going

    to maintain

    the achievement gap or education that

    borrow from

    dr gloria lads and billings is that a

    success

    if we're growing you know computer

    science for all

    but we look at the numbers and we've

    grown computer science

    and we've either maintained or perhaps

    even widened

    or perhaps stratified the digital

    inequities in computing so

    that's what keeps me up at night that

    how do we recommend and grow computer

    science

    without it being the schools that serve

    the most privileged reaping the most

    benefits

    i'm curious from a teacher education

    perspective and with your understanding

    of curriculum development and whatnot

    how do you encourage educators to

    consider

    whether or not the interdisciplinary

    experiences that they're designing are

    complementary in nature or are

    problematic in terms of being

    subservient so as an example like when i

    used to teach music classes like i had a

    math teacher come up and be like oh well

    i want you to create a song to teach

    math facts

    that was using music in a subservient

    relationship to math like it had no

    creative abilities on the students in

    related music they were literally just

    going to sing math facts

    another example in computer science

    there's like a dozen or so papers that i

    can

    readily point to that in the abstract it

    says

    the purpose of creating this

    interdisciplinary course was to increase

    enrollment in computer science classes

    that is putting whatever other subject

    area you pair this with in a subservient

    relationship to computer science

    so how do you help educators understand

    that there are problematic

    and unproblematic ways of actually

    combining multiple disciplines

    in some kind of educational experience

    oh

    that is a great question because i think

    back to my earlier comment about

    computer science being weaponized as a

    knowledge right like

    that you can't really teach us because

    you don't really know

    the oncology the epistemology you don't

    know this discipline

    deeply and yet that is also a fair

    characterization if we held it steady

    with other ways of knowing right

    you don't have a you know an education

    degree

    so you're talking about education

    so as we put these things together i

    think it's not only

    the disciplinary knowledge we make

    subservient we also think about who gets

    to make those decisions who's coming in

    with the funding

    it's not the language arts people coming

    in with funding and saying hey please

    partner with me

    i have funding it's the other way around

    so those power issues are so

    huge when we think about who's gotten

    the most funding

    what is this infusion of money into

    schools

    it's not writing a check to the

    principal's discretionary fund

    it's for computer science education or

    computing across the disciplines or

    so i think there's also we're not coming

    in with these disciplines really on the

    same political

    ground that they're being privileged in

    different ways maybe one in the school

    system

    because it's being assessed in high

    stakes tests and the other from these

    outside

    entities because jobs and national

    security

    and cs is everything and so it's the

    little apples and oranges as it comes

    together because

    whose odds wins out and if it gets to

    where the school says

    hey we have so many other mandates we're

    already in an underperforming school

    maybe that will win out and computer

    science will sort of go away because it

    doesn't have that same

    power in the way that the school's

    culture has been

    set up via policies right and mandates

    so that's another worry to get to your

    question when we put these subjects

    areas together i think that whole

    situated context of what's going around

    whose eyes are looking on it does

    somebody have to

    file a report somewhere or is this just

    two teachers having a conversation over

    a cocktail napkin on a friday night

    about a really cool

    instructional plan and how they might do

    justice to both disciplines

    and i think when we can get into that

    situation where school structures allow

    these professional

    conversations to happen and the

    discourse to happen

    amongst educators who have that

    pedagogical content knowledge in their

    discipline

    as well as their knowledge and then we

    can have like that sort of

    speed dating mash-up of ideas that i

    think would be

    incredibly generative and we could say

    no i'm not doing that song with

    your math facts no way let me explain to

    you what music is about

    and i think only then i don't think we

    can package it

    i think we need to create the conditions

    which allow

    professional people who have these

    knowledge have shared students

    understand where their students already

    are come up with wonderful ideas and

    then try them out in their classrooms

    and i think that's where the most hope

    for

    the in-service teachers to

    really do thoughtful infused

    interdisciplinary work

    i'm not sure that any single program can

    really do it because

    it takes those sets of knowledge that no

    one person

    might necessarily have it sounds like

    you are

    a special person in terms of your music

    and computing knowledge

    but not everybody has deep knowledge in

    multiple fields yeah so

    for pre-service educators then would you

    recommend

    experimentation and collaboration and

    communication like it's all about that

    just try things out have some dialogue

    with other people and reflect on what

    you're doing

    like what do you recommend for that

    person who's just about to become

    a full-time teacher and they're like i

    want to do this thing but like i know

    there's all these like hegemonic

    influences

    and like all the power structures that

    be like what do i do

    how do you help them out i think this is

    where you dive into the deep end in

    terms of teachers i think if they're

    asking those questions

    that's a great place to be i'm a big

    believer on

    the critical practice cycle of thinking

    about

    a particular goal in your classroom

    that's influenced by

    theory and research and then going

    through

    sort of a study cycle in your own

    classroom and on your own classroom

    teaching experience

    back to setting the goals and thinking

    about metrics

    and then am i doing this well yes i

    probably am furthering hegemonic of

    course but

    what can i do next time to further

    disrupt that

    right because any of us who have taught

    in the classroom know

    that like please don't come visit me my

    first year i'm just trying things out

    i will get better and that's that's the

    way it's supposed to be but the second

    year we should be seeing things get

    better and then the third year

    but it's not getting better into

    settling on the perfect

    i'm gonna date myself transparency slide

    it's not like this is day four of the

    curriculum

    i have perfected my teaching practice

    but it's digging deeper into those

    questions and

    simultaneously considering you know the

    content the pedagogy the student

    experience

    the climate of the classroom and your

    own growth as an educator to go

    deeper and harder each year because

    that's you know we don't

    want to be in complacency right that's

    not a goal

    of teaching and education it's adjusting

    and growing as well along with our

    students but maybe in a different way

    yeah i like that that really resonates

    with my own approach i would

    have students come back to the classroom

    whatever subject error i was working

    with and

    why don't we do it this way when i was

    in the class well because every year i'm

    like

    trying new things and iterating and

    learning etc

    but i say that having worked in a

    district where like they mandated

    specific lesson plans on specific days

    and it was the same

    every single year you weren't allowed to

    change them you had to be teaching the

    exact same thing every day

    it wasn't evolving with the times it

    wasn't changing with student interests

    and needs or

    this particular district had over 50

    elementary schools and all 50 of them

    were very different in terms of like

    demographics and needs and interests etc

    but they all were teaching the exact

    same thing it's like okay this is not

    ideal like who is this easy for is it

    for you as an administrator for the

    teachers or for the students because

    it doesn't seem like you're really

    taking into account what the students

    want to learn

    it's almost the color blind view of

    what you know equality looks right

    everybody's on the same page right

    this is fair yeah that definitely hits

    home

    the very first class that i taught in

    that district was

    it was supposed to be a class on like

    singing about being back to school and

    it was all in english

    and the class that i was working with

    not a single one of the kids spoke

    english and it was a three grade level

    combined class so i was like

    all right well already on the very first

    lesson your curriculum is not designed

    for these kids

    so fail right off the bat so

    one of the things that i'm interested in

    is influences

    on like we talked about hegemonic

    influences and whatnot so how does

    policy and administrators like

    influence what happens in the classroom

    so how does

    the support or lack of influence

    computer science implementation in the

    day-to-day

    so i think a few different ways one of

    the primary ways

    is policy makers and administrators

    are often particularly in middle school

    and high school spaces deciding where

    it gets placed into the curriculum which

    seems like a

    oh it's a victory it's at the school and

    often policy

    you know checkbox policy has css offered

    at the school

    but i think the placement into the

    curriculum is something we don't

    talk about quite enough because if it's

    placed

    into the advanced placement curriculum

    if the introduction to computer science

    becomes ap

    then suddenly we've designed a learning

    experience

    that again is targeting students who

    identify with ap who might think of

    themselves as apa students

    who already have that college-bound

    identity

    who might have some confidence and

    it's a space that is already marked for

    a particular set of students

    and a place that is marked as not for

    other students so i think that decision

    automatically

    much like at my own high school that's

    where the computer science course was

    placed it was an ap

    course and then even worse at my school

    experience it was placed as a zero

    period so

    before the buses came so unless you had

    transportation to the school early on

    it was difficult to have access to that

    course so

    i think that administrator decision

    about like oh well we

    want to grow computer science oh ap

    let's plop that in similarly but the

    other side of the coin

    that i'm increasingly seeing is the

    career technology

    education standalone courses and when i

    say standalone the ones that aren't also

    marked as academic credit some are some

    aren't

    and what those do is pretty similar to

    the idea

    of ap is i'm a cte student

    i this is my future career trajectory it

    here's a competing class

    okay well that's me because a i'm

    already thinking cte

    and b this is going to be my trajectory

    imagine us offering math or language

    arts like that like

    either putting it in the highly

    academically elite or

    vocationally themed program

    and not in the regular curriculum that's

    accessible

    for all students right so that's a

    choice but as significant

    repercussions in terms of which students

    have access to

    the course and what are potential future

    opportunities for those particular

    students

    so i think that is a major choice

    decision that principals administrators

    policymakers are making

    without really diving in and saying how

    can we

    put a course in this part of the

    curriculum

    and use the equity language when we

    already know those places in the

    curriculum

    have some pretty staggering

    racial and also gender discrepancies

    about who

    occupies that space and who that space

    is marked for

    that's one piece and i think the other

    piece is policy makers

    and administrators underestimating the

    need for this ongoing

    teacher support and professional

    development thinking that they

    are signed up for a program and thus

    like we bought the curriculum we're done

    here

    and i don't know that that's necessarily

    administrators i think administrators

    are pretty clear that professional

    development

    is important at least school building

    administrators

    often recognize that but i think as you

    go up to policy makers

    to other folks that often it's easier to

    adopt curriculum than

    to pay teachers to go to a professional

    development

    organize sub days do the things that it

    takes to actually support

    educators enacting the program or

    curriculum that was

    adopted by the school or district yeah

    well first of all the

    the cte and the ap discussion i love

    that that was

    definitely something that people need to

    consider is what kind of

    computer science are you implementing

    and how and who is this going to

    basically be marketed for in terms of

    the students who would attend it

    but then the administrative support the

    pd side of things

    it reminds me when i was the coding

    mentor for the last

    district that i was working in i was

    arguing with an administrator saying

    like look they need professional

    development they don't have the content

    knowledge on this

    literally everybody has come from some

    other subject area said they want to

    learn this thing

    but they don't know how to do computer

    science and their argument was well i

    teach people who have never taught math

    before how to do that so all you need is

    good pedagogy

    i was like no the difference between

    that is in order to get a degree in

    education you have to go through like

    what 12

    some odd years of math classes you've

    seen people teach this they've done the

    content area for at least a decade of

    their life

    computer science they may never even

    like seen what code looks like before

    this is completely different it's like

    asking

    somebody to teach russian when they've

    never seen it heard it spoken it etc

    and now you're asking them to do that

    without professional development like

    good luck with that

    right and what they'll do is they'll do

    a google search find the first little

    tutorial or video or and then we'll have

    low quality computing for probably for

    the teachers who work with the students

    who need it the most

    so you mentioned your work with

    exploring computer science

    the curriculum that you helped develop

    what were some of the big things that

    you learned while creating that

    curriculum

    wow there's a lot of big things one was

    that we started by teacher

    sourcing the curriculum which was great

    fun but we also learned

    that designing curriculum was more than

    just

    putting ideas from teachers together

    that

    having a thread and a spiraling approach

    required that careful design

    particularly with an inquiry-based

    curriculum because we want to make sure

    that the concepts

    percolate out but then are built on

    later on so

    thinking about how to get ideas from the

    field from teachers

    into curriculum materials but also

    curate them in a way that is cohesive

    across these multiple voices

    that was a big learning piece and also

    being

    okay with the fact that some of our

    links are going to expire

    the day after we release a new edition

    of the curriculum

    that really believing in the teachers to

    say okay that's another example

    that the professional disposition will

    carry the curriculum

    that we think of the curriculum as the

    notes on the page but the

    pd is sort of the symphony where it

    comes alive

    so understanding what the curriculum

    could do

    should do how it supports teaching and

    learning but also

    understanding that it is not stand alone

    maybe that was just my own

    learning around that piece and i think

    another thing i learned is that

    curriculum is not a political

    that there's been pushback over the

    years about various parts of the

    curriculum

    at one point we were asked by a funder

    and after some deliberation we did take

    out a lesson because the funder

    was uncomfortable with the lesson and

    the lesson was about the

    martin luther king.org site and about

    fake news and about white supremacy you

    know

    praying on adolescence on the internet

    to join their hate groups

    and we thought that was an important

    lesson well other people

    felt that that could get misread and

    that we'd be having all these kids go to

    the website and clicking on it which

    our curriculum never asked them to do so

    i think i also

    learned that doing the work of

    equity-based curriculum

    is not always going to make people happy

    they want equity and inclusion built on

    whiteness and sometimes

    having some of these other lessons gets

    some of this

    pushback because curriculum is not a

    political

    so that was a lesson too and i think

    we're going to be re-integrating that

    into our curriculum

    because i think if there's ever a time

    to talk about

    this part of the internet and the way

    that computer science has led to

    the hateful discourse white supremacy in

    this country

    this is part of the naming that our

    field is not

    all good and that computer science is

    not deterministic to

    create more people to help support such

    websites and technologies that we need

    to have students

    be aware and informed of these types of

    lessons

    so i'm also aware of opportunities that

    continue to present themselves but

    sort of the political climate in which

    we're able

    to continue to support exploring

    computer science with funds to

    frankly which go to teachers and

    professional development support

    how do you design for equity and what

    advice would you give

    for other educators who like even if

    it's just a lesson

    and they want to design with accounting

    for equity

    what advice would you give in terms of

    designing for

    equity i think about opportunities for

    students to find their different

    identities within the curriculum

    so thinking about many different ways

    that different students can connect in

    so

    not having the same assignment i mean it

    could be the same assignment with the

    same criteria

    allowing students to really find

    themselves

    find people who look like them but also

    find people who think like them who have

    values like them

    who have extracurricular hobbies like

    them who might be

    an athlete like them or an artist and i

    think

    finding those opportunities are

    really particularly useful in curriculum

    i also think that we have some

    historical routes that we should start

    integrating into

    curriculum as well to tell some of the

    hidden tales

    around the history of computing and the

    people

    in them if i had some extra time this is

    something that

    i would love somebody to do for k-12 is

    some curriculum around alan turing and

    grace hopper and catherine johnson other

    people who have had

    an impact in this field whose stories

    have not been told or when they're told

    they're

    sort of outside of the curricular

    content so i would also hope that as

    people

    are designing for equity going forward

    that they're thinking about

    making sure that computing isn't being

    perceived as something that

    you know was invented in silicon valley

    in the late 20th century but something

    that is bigger than that that has had

    more participation of that

    and it tells some of the counter stories

    about the field and what it can do

    in addition to the field as a technology

    i think our biggest mistake with

    computing curriculum is we

    treat it as a technical knowledge when

    really it's a social science

    in terms of social people this is not a

    natural science

    we have created this and we have

    designed this and we have written the

    algorithms and we have bought the

    devices and put them in our homes and we

    have made

    choices every step of the way

    there's nothing sort of natural about

    computing

    as a field so i think the more

    curriculum design that

    presents that more holistic vision of

    computing

    rather than just the technical

    dimensions devoid of all

    socio-cultural context will be really

    generative way

    of designing for equity and inclusion so

    if you had the ability to

    wave a magic wand and like here's the

    ideal curriculum whether it's like a

    variation of ecs or its own

    thing what would you include in that you

    know one thing

    as much as i'm not a big person on tools

    i

    love ron eglash's culturally situated

    design tools and

    wish we had more of those to

    develop some content and curriculum

    around because i think it's

    a nice sort of approach to computing

    what excites me about that approach is

    it's basically ethnic studies for

    computing

    which is what we should be doing anyway

    and i really appreciate that perspective

    and wish there were more resources

    along that way i think a major problem

    just in k-12

    is connecting the dots between great

    bands particularly k-12 formal education

    but also those

    informal opportunities what does it mean

    when we do scratch in second grade and

    sixth grade and 10th grade

    and maybe in at uc berkeley as a cs0

    class

    maybe it's layering and building on each

    other each time just

    like we teach students to write a

    paragraph when they're younger and

    they're still writing paragraphs in

    college

    but it's getting more sophisticated or

    maybe it's the same intro scratch

    activity

    we don't really know and i think that's

    for me

    it's getting that braid band cohesion

    not just written down as standards but

    actual curriculum where we can point to

    that does that threading between

    grades between schools so we start

    thinking about things from a student

    experience instead of a

    program experience so if my kid went to

    kindergarten next week where would they

    be

    in 12 years right what would that

    experience be like

    and i think my magic wand would be to

    have

    the resources in place to support that

    trajectory rather than

    a whole bunch of opportunities that may

    or may not be connected

    across that experience how have you

    iterated on your own understandings of

    either education or cs education

    over the years like how do you being

    like a practice nerd musician

    i was trying to think of how do i

    improve upon my abilities

    what is your version of practice how

    does that look like for you

    in education i think there's a couple

    different ways one is

    i see a nice synergy between my research

    and my college teaching so

    a lot of the exploring computer science

    lessons for example

    i infuse into my college teaching and

    then we

    have conversations around sort of

    educational design

    and pedagogy and liberatory approaches

    to education based on those and

    that helps me both appreciate what's

    going on with teachers i work with

    because i'm having similar experiences

    but also

    reflective places of areas of growth for

    myself

    i would say honestly though the place

    that i

    feel like i'm get the most professional

    development is hanging out with my

    colleagues

    both my teaching k-12 teaching

    colleagues

    and my university scholarly colleagues

    in different areas

    who say well that's great but what does

    computer science

    mean when we think about it in terms of

    native people and sovereignty

    and then i pause and i think wow that's

    a really good question

    that i probably wouldn't have gotten

    from hanging out with mostly

    you know these folks and so i think i'm

    fortunate enough to be in a scholarly

    area where we can have those

    conversations in a department

    that is built on people with different

    areas of expertise but a common

    commitment to social justice and

    decolonization

    and so some of those threats continue to

    inform

    that theory nerd in me about almost puts

    pebbles in my shoes of like

    okay i've been doing anti-racist

    education

    but have i really been thinking about

    decolonization and what it means

    in terms of computer science education

    and if i haven't okay now who do i need

    to talk

    to what do i need to read what do i need

    to do

    and so i think just being around those

    people with both

    similar areas and different areas has

    really

    continues to provide reflective fodder

    and conversations for me

    yeah that is also something that i

    highly recommend any

    like whether it was a new doc student

    coming into a program or

    just like another teacher i always

    recommend read outside of the field like

    just keep learning from other people

    that you're not used to hearing

    from the same discourse in the field try

    and get a different perspective and

    apply it into it you learn so much from

    that practice

    one of the questions that i mentioned

    that i love to ask is

    talking about how do you prevent this

    burnout and in particular with

    the research on access and equity and

    social justice and liberatory practices

    like

    when you actually sit down and really

    think about that and that's what you do

    like all day every day that can lead to

    out very quickly because it can be very

    depressing so how do you personally try

    and take care of yourself

    while also engaging in these heavy

    topics good question i think

    again relying on colleagues and

    friends and having these conversations

    so it doesn't feel like it's a

    solo endeavor or such a load because

    it can be you know systemic racism is

    not

    the easiest to swallow and you know as a

    white person i am

    very conscious of how i can sort of turn

    off the computer and walk into the

    grocery store and have an experience

    that is

    validating all the systemic racism but

    validating it from a place that

    continues to give me privilege

    and that could be challenging as well

    i believe in self-care i like to get

    sunshine

    it's the opposite of the computing part

    reminds me of my commodore 64 and my

    mother always coming up and saying go

    outside and play go climb a tree

    and she would kick me out of the house

    and i tried to still

    do that like okay i've been at the

    computer go down and i like to garden i

    found that really

    restorative for me to feel like my

    fingers in the soil

    and to grow and to nurture and

    also i have always been a swimmer and i

    still swim

    so that gives another layer to this

    given that swimming is a metaphor on

    being stuck in the shallow end

    because swimming is a great form of

    self-care and yet i

    finish this work and i often go pop to

    the swimming pool and i feel great and i

    have incredibly awesome exercise

    and i look around myself and i'm

    surrounded by mostly other white people

    swimming at the swimming pool

    so it's that self-care but the constant

    i mean we live in a society where

    to get to my swimming pool nowadays i

    have to have a reservation then you walk

    through either the

    women's locker room or the men's locker

    room to get to the pool

    so it's almost the things are so

    clear how we do this gendering and this

    racing

    and i can't i never shake it because i

    think it's who i am i think about these

    issues all the time

    but i tried to do the healthy exercise

    and that being

    grounded in my place and in my community

    to remind myself that these ideas and

    issues are all connected but we can only

    work on it when we take care of

    ourselves

    and we're able to show up and do the

    work

    yeah so at the time the recording this

    morning the interview with nikki

    washington released

    and in that one and in the interview

    with joyce mccauley we talk about double

    consciousness and how

    both of them being black cis women like

    they are

    unable to escape that double

    consciousness

    and it sounds like with what you're

    going through you're still experiencing

    that double consciousness of knowing

    oh well i'm in a situation of privilege

    and i recognize that

    so you're seeing yourself from those two

    different angles of how you are

    fitting within it but you're also trying

    to actively fight against it and

    recognize that it's problematic so yeah

    that can still be draining even when

    you're trying to engage in leisure

    yes in fact i'll share a funny little

    story the other day

    i went to my swim practice and i was

    standing in the line outside

    you have to have a reservation one of my

    colleagues came out she's a math

    educator and

    we were so happy to see each other you

    know six feet away at distance instead

    of on a zoom call we were chatting away

    i went into the swimming pool and as you

    go in because you have to have a

    reservation you have to disclose your

    name

    and answer the code questions and so i

    did so and about 20 minutes later this

    woman leaned over and she said can i ask

    you an

    awkward question i said sure she said

    are you joanna good the cs education

    researcher

    and i thought it was going to be one of

    my students because i'm teaching on zoom

    and we

    all we live in a community i said

    yes and she said oh my gosh i've read

    everything you've ever written

    and turns out she had heard my name when

    i came in

    and she works for google philanthropy

    and

    she had just recently moved to oregon

    but it was me taking the time off from

    work

    to go to the swimming pool to have this

    workout

    that ended up having a double

    professional sort of encounter

    right but again within the

    you know is this the locker room banter

    right am i in a privileged space to be

    having these conversations

    that i know historically have kept other

    people out of so

    i think that double consciousness you

    know as that white person

    sort of understanding of how we navigate

    and maneuver in a world

    that was built for us structurally but

    without being complacent with it is it's

    a difficult space to

    maneuver and yet it's nothing compared

    to what i know

    by poc lgbtq people other folks who have

    been marginalized

    feel every second of every day so

    speaking of your research

    i'm curious what do you wish more people

    understood about your research

    what i think people maybe misunderstand

    is

    that this is about curriculum rather

    than about teaching

    and learning and equity and i think

    curriculum

    is one of the vehicles along with policy

    and professional development but i think

    it's so easy for people

    to hear exploring computer science

    or to hear that language and to think

    that

    the curriculum is what is the work

    rather than all those levels of

    curriculum that you listed before

    and also the power of pedagogy being

    something that people

    develop over time and is beyond those

    single efforts

    so i think that's one piece and i think

    the other piece

    is that connection between classroom

    teaching and learning

    and policy and maybe this isn't what

    people

    misunderstood but what i hope people do

    understand

    is that double lens between

    what are the equity practices happening

    with teaching and learning

    and what are the structural equity

    practices that we put in place

    that support that teaching and learning

    and that we can't do one without the

    other

    and i think we've had lots of examples

    of hey in this ideal classroom

    these are great computer science

    knowledge that comes out or

    here's some policy structures to get

    computer science instruction

    but i believe and i hope that my

    research continues to think about

    the place where we consider both of

    those ideas simultaneously

    because without one the other is

    inadequate i'm also curious

    what do you wish there's more research

    on that can inform what you

    do in the classroom one of the areas is

    thinking about anti-racist curriculum

    and having more examples of that i'm

    really

    thrilled about nikki washington's class

    at duke i can't

    wait to listen to the podcast i want

    more of that

    frankly i think that's a really exciting

    place

    i also would appreciate

    studies and scholarship around

    gender and computer science that goes

    beyond the binary that considers

    what it might mean to queer computer

    science not just

    in terms of who the students are but the

    way we

    have codified gender binaries

    in almost every single space in computer

    science and

    the damages it does to people in our

    systems

    i think that is an incredibly important

    and needed area particularly because

    we've been talking about gender

    and computer science for 30 years 40

    years i don't even know how many decades

    and yet we're still it still ends up

    with

    okay what are we going to do to fix

    these girls or women

    which one it's not really about the

    deficits of girls and women and secondly

    gender is much more expansive than

    that binary so i think that's an area

    that i

    would like to see more scholarship

    because i would like to cite that more

    scholarship i feel a little

    limited in my own treatment of gender

    because

    this is one of those let's read outside

    of other fields certainly

    and thinking about genders

    performativity and such

    is helpful but i don't think that

    discourse is quite entered in computer

    science

    the way i hope one of my graduate

    students max gorandinsky is exploring

    this as his dissertation research too so

    i'm very excited about that area

    and i would just say less gap gazing in

    general like we know the disparities we

    know the statistics

    i think less focus on the pipeline i'm

    troubled by that metaphor

    maybe that's changed since that article

    too it's not the metaphor it's

    problematic for many

    ways i think we need to think about

    success

    in computing that is not measuring how

    many students want to go on to

    technology industry or even majors that

    there's a lot of ways to be successful

    and we're almost limiting by that

    singular

    treatment of thriving in a perhaps

    hostile space

    as the metric of success so that's

    something

    also i've been thinking about in terms

    of more research

    and that would be more qualitative

    descriptions that thick rich

    descriptions of what success might look

    like

    and what impact might look like that

    doesn't end up in a chart

    that shows the same education debt over

    and over again

    yeah there's so much that i just want to

    like snap my fingers with that like

    that heavily resonates with a lot of

    things that i've been exploring

    one of the things that i'm working on is

    a paper it was submitted

    it was for a music education journal and

    it was myself a non-conforming

    individual

    a trans woman and trans man like talking

    about from our perspectives within the

    trans and non-binary community like

    here are some suggestions for you in the

    music education field

    because the narrative has been kind of

    taken over by well-intentioned cis

    individuals

    but not actually people within the

    community talking about it so like

    one of the reasons why i speak up as

    like hey i'm non-binary hey

    like i am not a heterosexual male like

    it's not discussed enough

    but i will say that computer science is

    actually a little bit further ahead in

    terms of

    including at the very least another

    category or a fill in your own blank

    category on gender whereas

    some of the music education stuff that

    i've looked at they still don't even

    have that

    so like that is a good thing but like

    you were saying with the gender gaps we

    tend to talk about well where are the

    women

    in computer science fields but there's

    an episode that's going to release

    next week from the time of this

    particular recording on

    paulo ferreira's book pedagogy of the

    oppressed so like

    in that chapter four discussion that i

    do i say

    okay well if we're going to problematize

    the lack of women in computer science

    why are we not problematizing the lack

    of men in

    elementary education it's 80 white

    female so

    like if we're going to say that this is

    an issue to have this kind of imbalance

    then we need to talk about it everywhere

    and not just highlight certain

    demographic differences over others

    but that's my own little rant do you

    have questions for myself for for the

    field

    i think just the question for the field

    is

    the one i raised earlier how do we

    grow expand computer science i'm a big

    believer in computing i used to think

    okay how do we grow opportunity maybe my

    own

    progress or growth over the last decade

    is looking at my three children and

    saying which one would i say

    should not take computer science which

    one is it not important for and since i

    couldn't reach an answer i thought

    okay which other child can i think would

    not benefit from computer science and i

    couldn't think of a child who would not

    benefit

    so i've come to the realization that i

    really do believe it's

    critical fundamental literacy maybe

    reading the code to the fairy pun on

    what it means to be literate right and

    the importance of that

    so i think my question given that

    computer science is

    important and a critical literacy how do

    we

    grow it and not have the same gaps how

    do we grow it and not just grow it

    for the groups of people who have always

    benefited

    in this country and as somebody who's

    thinking about equity inclusion first

    i wouldn't think that our work is

    successful if the gap

    continues to be there so

    the question is how do we do computer

    science for all

    and not perpetuate the access

    and achievement gaps right literacy for

    all

    we still have those achievement gaps

    algebra for all we still have tracking

    and achievement gaps

    how will computer science for all be

    different so that's

    the question that i leave for the field

    is

    how do we grow things without

    perpetuating the privilege

    that's already been there yeah and how

    do we as a field

    if we think it should be for everyone

    but we also acknowledge that not

    everyone's going to become a computer

    scientist

    for a career how do we engage in

    computer science for leisure for mental

    health for

    like other reasons besides future jobs

    and whatnot that's one of the

    big things that i've tried to push for

    in the content that i create

    like whether it's the curriculum or the

    podcast is like look it doesn't have to

    be for jobs like i proposed to my wife

    by modifying a video game i changed the

    code put our dogs in it

    like that was for fun it wasn't for a

    job it was just something i wanted to do

    and there's this

    whole side of research on mod culture

    that is often not discussed in computer

    science education which is weird because

    like it's programming

    like and there's also the hardware side

    of things as well so like

    it talks about everything related

    computer science but it's for informal

    practices for fun

    and yet as a field we rarely mention it

    i think that's a really important point

    i think

    the formal and informal people are

    rarely

    talking or if they're talking we're not

    having those conversations about the

    synergy

    that we really could be and i think

    that's a ripe area for what does it mean

    to

    have sort of a supportive ecosystem

    of a computing education ecosystem that

    doesn't only live

    in the summer camps it doesn't only live

    in the fifth grade curriculum it doesn't

    only live in the ap

    class there's some thought and how these

    students can

    build on these learning different spaces

    to ultimately get a much more

    well-rounded and situated

    experience in computing where might

    people go to connect with you

    and the organizations that you work with

    people can always email

    me at goodjay uoregon.edu

    our exploring computer science website

    is also a great

    resource at www.exploringcs.org

    we have a great list of research

    articles associated with ecs

    on that website as well as e-textiles

    resources and a new ai unit

    and people can always feel free to reach

    out to me anytime i'm happy to have

    these conversations

    and with that that concludes this week's

    episode of the csk8 podcast

    i hope you enjoyed listening to that

    interview as much as i did

    and i hope you consider sharing this

    with another educator

    that might benefit from it or providing

    a review on whatever platform you're

    listening to this on

    again you can find links to much of what

    we talked about in the

    podcast by going to the show notes and i

    hope you stay tuned next week for

    another

    unpacking scholarship episode and two

    weeks from now for

    another interview thank you so much for

    listening i hope you have a wonderful

    week

    and are staying safe

Guest Bio

Goode-Joanna.png

Dr. Joanna Goode is the Sommerville Knight Professor in the College of Education at the University of Oregon. She began her career in education as a high school computer science teacher in a large, diverse urban school, and she builds on this experience to research how educational policies and practices can foster equitable and inclusive learning in K-12 computer science education. Joanna has directed multiple National Science Foundation-sponsored research projects examining teachers’ learning around equity, inclusion, and justice in computing classrooms. She is the co-creator of the equity-focused Exploring Computer Science course and is the co-author of the book, Stuck in the Shallow End: Education, Race, and Computing (MIT Press, 2008/2017). Joanna is currently a member of the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Social Justice Action Committee; and is a past member of the Association for Computing Machinery’s ACM’s Education Policy Committee and the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) Board of Directors.

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