Promoting socio-political identification with computer science: How high school youth restory their identities through electronic textile quilts
Mia S. Shaw, Gayeon Ji, Yi Zhang, Yasmin B. Kafai
Abstract
While many initiatives have broadened participation of minoritized youth in K-12 computing education, far fewer efforts have focused on expanding the social, political and cultural contexts of CS identity development. In this study, we propose a “restorying” pedagogy which engaged high school youth in interrogating dominant narratives about computer science through collaborative, electronic textile quilt-making. In our social design experiment approach, we designed and implemented a workshop where 14 racially- and ethnically-diverse youth crafted and coded interactive quilt patches that were digitally “stitched” into a collaborative artifact, with each patch reimagining CS from youths' perspectives (particularly regarding what CS is, who can participate in CS, and how CS is done). By analyzing post-workshop interviews and participant artifacts, we observed that counterstorytelling through electronic quilting can act as accessible and authentic tools to support youth's political identity work, electronic counternarrative expression, and community building in computing education. In the discussion, we address how restorying can contribute towards developing self-authored identities and critical computational literacies among youth and educators, as well as political solidarity within CS learning environments.