Leveraging Multilingualism to Support Computer Science Education through Translanguaging Pedagogies

New York University, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

Expertise in technology is critical to our national economy and security, and is knowledge that all citizens need to meaningfully participate in our digital age. However, computer science education has failed to make progress at including women, minorities, people with disabilities, and people of low income in computing fields. In response, many states and federal agencies have joined an effort called CS for All to ensure all K-12 students have a chance to learn computer science concepts. In New York City, the city's Department of Education (DOE) has committed to rolling out computer science learning opportunities to all schools. One barrier the district faces is how best to teach computer science to students who are learning English. Using an approach called translanguaging, this project is a partnership between city educators, researchers in computer science education, and researchers in language and literacy. Translanguaging is an approach that allows teachers to tailor their teaching to whatever language skills children bring to the table. There are reasons to suspect that some of the skills multilingual kids use to learn multiple languages may also be useful in helping them learn to program computers. This project will explore whether that is the case, and will develop and test approaches for bilingual educators to incorporate computer science concepts in their teaching. This project begins a research-practice partnership between New York University, the City University of New York, and three NYC public middle schools serving predominantly low-income Latino/a students, many of whom are becoming bilingual. The project is structured around a design-based implementation research approach, which emphasizes shared problem definition, co-design between educators and researchers, field-based scaling friendly testing of interventions, and increasing capacity for partners to create sustainable change. The intellectual merit includes addressing three research questions: How, when and why do students translanguage as they learn computational thinking? How can teachers support and leverage students' translanguaging in computer science education through curricular design and adaptation approaches based on translanguaging pedagogy and literate programming practices? And, are students' translanguaging practices linked to learning processes or outcomes in computational thinking? The research methodology is a three iteration, design-based research study involving students in Science and English and Language Arts courses using primarily qualitative data sources including analysis of design narratives, classroom observation, and interviews and focus groups. The broader impacts of the project include linking research in literacy education and computer science education, which have not intersected much before; capacity building within the NYC DOE which will help guide New York City's rollout of CS for All; and creating ways to support emergent bilinguals that do not rely on fixed curricula for speakers of particular languages, but rather on professional development that helps teachers create and adapt curricula to support students whatever their language backgrounds. The project will develop a draft toolkit for teacher professional development which leverages translanguaging pedagogy for integration of computational thinking topics in the middle grades. This toolkit will be available both in NYC and nationwide.