Lets Talk Code: Broadening Computing Education among Native Americans by Blending Code with Nature, Art and Culture

Navajo Technical University leads Project Let’s Talk Code to investigate a novel approach to introduce Computer Science (CS) to high school students in the Navajo Nation (NN) tribal region in Arizona and New Mexico. Its name is rooted in the contributions and legacy of the Navajo Code Talkers, who played a pivotal role in the Allied forces’ victory in World War II.

Just like the Navajo Code Talkers engineered their own code and created a new way of communicating through the Navajo language, these students will learn to do the same through a co-developed culturally rooted curriculum that is contextualized in real-world problem-solving activities that are intimately connected to the Navajo culture. The goal of the project is to improve students’ computational skills with a focus on preparing them to succeed in the Advance Placement (AP) computer science courses and motivate them to enroll in CS degrees.

The project aims to help math, science and art teachers from NN high schools develop CS based projects in their existing courses and provide mentorship and guidance towards offering AP Computer Science Principles (CSP) courses in the subsequent years. The program will include a two-week professional development program and follow-up activities. Native Americans (NA) have historically been the most underrepresented population when it comes to participating in STEM and computing careers.

The Navajo are one of the largest NA groups in the country and understanding the barriers and developing solutions to increase their participation will have far reaching consequences on informing the research and practice on how computing can be taught at NA tribal high schools.

Project Let’s Talk Code (LTC) is a Research Practitioner Partnership (RPP) that investigates a novel approach to introduce Computer Science (CS) to high school students in the Navajo Nation (NN) tribal region in Arizona and New Mexico. The goal of the RPP is to improve students’ computational skills with a focus on preparing them to succeed in the Advance Placement (AP) computer science courses and motivate them to enroll in CS degrees.

The project aims to help math, science and art teachers from NN high schools develop CS based projects in their existing courses and provide mentorship and guidance towards offering AP Computer Science Principles (CSP) courses in the subsequent years. The program will include a two-week professional development program and follow-up activities. Its framework builds on a widely used AP computer science principles (CSP) curriculum developed by Code.org and stays true to the principles of writing, editing, compiling and executing code, while providing additional meaning via culturally rooted real-world examples that are contextualized in the Navajo culture.

The project team will engage tribal community stakeholders, administrators, teachers and regional colleges in the design and development of the curriculum and its broader application in the NN community. The RPP is structured as an iterative evidence-based design project where the teachers (practitioners) work with a multi-institutional team of researchers and CS educators to improve the capacity building needs of its partners (high schools and regional colleges).

It includes a mixed-methods analysis of qualitative and quantitative data collected by offering professional development training sessions, after school programs and peer-to-peer mentoring. Frequent and timely analysis feeds into the co-creation and co-design of the curriculum during the duration of the project. Capacity building activities during the project such as the creation of communities of practices will ensure long term sustainability.

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.