Advancing Research and Practice in Culturally-Relevant Computing in Upper Elementary Education

This project is motivated by the need to prepare elementary teachers to effectively integrate Computer Science (CS) education into their teaching. To address this need, this project will provide professional development focused on culturally-relevant computing. Culturally-relevant computing values explicit connections between students’ home cultures and the concepts and practices of CS.

Research has shown that culturally-relevant pedagogies help students from marginalized communities succeed in a variety of fields including STEM-related areas. Accordingly, the project's basis is that a sustained culturally-relevant computing professional development program will be an effective way to prepare educators to reliably produce valued CS and culture-based outcomes.

The work will be done by a partnership between faculty and staff at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM) and the Hawaiʻi State Department of Education (HIDOE). The project will directly address concerns about the need to prepare teachers to integrate CS into their teaching while simultaneously promoting Hawaiʻi’s unique place, history, culture, and language.

The project’s practical and theoretical outputs regarding culturally-relevant computing and its pedagogical implications will be applicable to other cultures and contexts interested in equity and diversity.

With the goal of better understanding the role of culturally-relevant computing in supporting CS education, this research-practitioner partnership will provide professional development to upper elementary (grades 4 - 6) educators (n = 230) in Hawaiʻi. Specifically, the project pursues practice and research objectives aligned with calls to broaden participation in CS, better understand pedagogical factors supporting effective CS education, and examine how CS education can promote CS and culture-based education outcomes.

The practice objectives of the project include: 1) developing culturally-relevant computing modules, 2) implementing a professional development program about culturally-relevant computing, and 3) forming a professional learning community about culturally-relevant computing. The project’s research objectives will advance the field’s theoretical and practical understanding of how culturally-relevant computing impacts educators’ knowledge and beliefs about (a) the subject of CS, (b) their ability to teach CS, and (c) the relationship between CS and culture-based outcomes.

Methodologically, the project will follow a design-based research process coupled with an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design. Taken together, this project will help researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers, better understand how culturally-relevant (sustaining) pedagogy can be leveraged to increase diversity, equity and inclusion in STEM-related fields such as CS.

This project is funded through 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.