ERIC Number: EJ1318462
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2021-Dec
Pages: 33
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-1946-6226
EISSN: N/A
Intercultural Computing Education: Toward Justice across Difference
Arawjo, Ian; Mogos, Ariam
ACM Transactions on Computing Education, v21 n4 Article 30 Dec 2021
Even in the turn toward justice-oriented pedagogy, computing education tends to overlook the quality of intergroup relationships, which risks entrenching division. In this article, we establish an intercultural approach to computing education, informed by intercultural and peace education, prejudice reduction, and the sociology of racism and ethnicity. We outline three major concerns of intercultural computing: shifting from content toward relationships, from cultural responsiveness to cultural reflexivity, and from identity to identification. For the last, we complicate discourses of race and identity widespread in U.S. education. Drawing from studies of youth programming classes in East Africa and U.S. contexts, we then reflect on our attempts to address the first shift of fostering relationships across difference. We highlight three promising design tactics: intergroup pairing, interdependent programming, and making relational goals explicit. Overall, we find that computing can indeed be a site of intergroup bonding across difference, but that bonding can carry complications and tensions with other equity goals and tactics. Rather than framing justice-oriented CS primarily as changes to the aims of computational learning, we argue that future work should explore making relational goals explicit and teach students how to attend to friction.
Descriptors: Intergroup Relations, Computer Science Education, Social Justice, Cultural Awareness, Cultural Differences, Attachment Behavior, Racial Identification, Foreign Countries
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: United States; Africa
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A