Undergraduate Student Attitudes towards a Social Justice Context in a Programming Project
Amid increasing calls for critical and anti-oppressive approaches to computer science (CS) education, educators are exploring how to create justice-centered teaching material. Additionally, broadening participation in justice-centered computing requires an understanding of students’ relationship with social justice and their CS education. In this study, we created and distributed a programming project with a social justice context and critical thinking reflection questions as a probe for an intermediate programming class. We conducted a thematic analysis of 11 semi-structured interviews and distributed a short survey (N=86) with students of this class at a large public research university in the American Midwest. Our findings showed that these students support social justice contexts and content within their computer science education. Students requested deeper dives and discussions into social justice programming that would challenge their preconceived notions, incorporate calls to action, and direct action. However, we also found an interesting tension forming: many students described how their homework problem-solving mindset clashed with the critical thinking reflection questions.
Fri 22 MarDisplayed time zone: Pacific Time (US & Canada) change
15:45 - 17:00 | Social Justice and EquityPapers at Meeting Rooms B113-114 Chair(s): Carl Haynes-Magyar Carnegie Mellon University | ||
15:45 25mTalk | Designing for Equity in Education Via Computational Thinking: A Case Study Papers Ryoko Yamaguchi Plus Alpha Research and Consulting, Cyntrica Eaton Eaton Technologies Consulting Group DOI | ||
16:10 25mTalk | "It Can Relate to Real Lives'': Attitudes and Expectations in Justice-Centered Data Structures & Algorithms for Non-Majors Papers Anna Batra University of Washington, Iris Zhou University of Washington, Suh Young Choi University of Washington, Chongjiu Gao University of Washington, Yanbing Xiao University of Washington, Sonia Fereidooni University of Washington, Kevin Lin University of Washington, Seattle DOI | ||
16:35 25mTalk | Undergraduate Student Attitudes towards a Social Justice Context in a Programming Project Papers Aadarsh Padiyath University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Kyle Ashburn University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Barbara Ericson University of Michigan DOI |