Culturing computation: A multi-case study on students as ethnocomputing researchers during a virtual after-school program

Abstract

Ethnocomputing is a field about the co-constitutive relationships of culture and computational technology, digital and analog. It assumes that all technologies are value-laden and that cultural activities, practices, designs, and knowledge can be computational. Within education, ethnocomputing has inspired the design of software and hardware to help children study the computing ideas that are embedded in Indigenous and vernacular epistemologies, designs, and practices, such as African American cornrow braiding, Anishinaabeg quilting, Ghanaian Adinkra stamping, and more. Not only does this provide a way to add epistemic diversity to computing curricula but it is also a challenge to Eurocentric histories of computer science. Quantitative research on these educational technologies has been promising in terms of supporting children's attitudes toward and content knowledge of computing. This research also suggests that just being exposed to these technologies may not be enough for students to make the connections between culture and computing that ethnocomputing assumes as its foundation. To address this challenge, we report findings from a multi-case study of four Black high school students who took on roles as ethnocomputing researchers during a five-week virtual after-school program. Instead of focusing on if the program supported their computer science content knowledge, we sought to study the students' meaning-making and knowledge production practices on culture and computing in their ethnocomputing research. Our findings show that while only two of the four children felt confident identifying themselves as ethnocomputing researchers by the time the program ended, all students were able to express nuanced and unique ideas about culture-computing relationships that were relevant to ethnocomputing. We end with some recommendations about framing the image of the “researcher” in future ethnocomputing education.