Culturally-responsive teaching for supporting positive computer science identities among Latinx girls

This project is a research-practice partnership involving the Santa Clara County Office of Education, Krause Center for Innovation at Foothill DeAnza College, San José State University College of Science Center for STEM Education, WestEd, and the Berryessa Union, Milpitas Unified, and Orchard Elementary School Districts. It is supporting 4th and 5th grade teachers to adopt culturally-responsive teaching and studying how this impacts the identities of Latinas as they relate to computational thinking (CT) and computer science (CS).

Female Latina students are one of the populations that presently are among the least likely to engage in CS or to pursue CS-related careers. Although it is widely accepted that early interventions are critical to engage underrepresented students in STEM, there is a dearth of opportunities for students to effectively engage with CS and CT skills as part of their classroom instruction.

The study focuses on addressing this and developing among Latinas positive identity around foundational CT skills, particularly algorithmic thinking and abstraction as they relate to mathematics. The project activities are preparing teachers to effectively teach abstraction and algorithmic thinking and assess CT practices; developing CT activities for 4th & 5th grade that are culturally responsive and that promote positive identity among Latinas; and assessing the effectiveness of these curricula towards improving positive identity and math achievement in classrooms serving predominantly minority youth in the 4th and 5th grades. In total, this project is impacting 1400 students and among them, at least 350 Latina students.

A central objective of this project is to apply culturally responsive teaching to computational thinking practices that will provide an opportunity to support positive identity in STEM in Latina girls. The first activity in achieving this objective is developing professional learning for 4th and 5th grade educators using Critical Race Theory and other culturally responsive teaching methods that use the Framework for Multicultural Curriculum Design (Sleeter et al., 2005).

The strategy is to integrate CT into mathematics and other curricula through a modified Engage-Investigate Model-Apply progression. Teachers then use these culturally responsive methods to create positive identity with the content. Teacher practice is being assessed on the CT Practices of algorithms and abstraction, but specifically on abstraction as well as on related ideas in mathematics to determine if there is a tertiary effect on increasing math scores.

A mixed-methods study is exploring the impacts of the curricula and professional development through observations, data collection on student work, and attitudinal surveys. This project is funded by the CS for All: Research and RPPs program.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.