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Culturally Responsive Debugging: a Method to Support Cultural Experts’ Early Engagement with Code

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Abstract

Despite the value that cultural experts bring to efforts to broaden the participation of racially minoritized youth in US computer science, there has been little research on supporting their knowledge of computing. This is a missed opportunity to explore the diffusion of computing knowledge across local community contexts where underrepresented youth of color spend time. To address this gap, we present one strategy for promoting cultural experts’ early engagement with code, culturally responsive debugging: using culturally situated expertise and knowledge to debug code. We analyzed qualitative data from a professional development workshop for cultural experts to evaluate this strategy. Our findings have implications for broadening participation efforts and supporting non-programmers’ knowledge of code.

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Notes

  1. In Our Knowledge is Not Primitive: Decolonizing Botanical Anishinaabe Teachings, Wendy Makoons Geniusz (2009) uses the Anishinaabemowin term anishinaabe-gikendaasowin to mean the “knowledge, information, and the synthesis” of the teachings of Anishinaabeg communities (p.11). We use the term here to acknowledge Eglash et al.’s (2020) focus on Anishinaabeg architecture and design.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Science + Society @ State and the John and Lucy Bates-Byers Educational Technology Endowment for their support of this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education, Michigan State University, College of Education, 620 Farm Ln. Room 513A, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA

    Michael Lachney, Aman Yadav, Matt Drazin & Madison C. Allen

  2. Science and Technology Studies Department, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA

    William Babbitt

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  1. Michael Lachney
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  2. Aman Yadav
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Correspondence to Michael Lachney.

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Lachney, M., Yadav, A., Drazin, M. et al. Culturally Responsive Debugging: a Method to Support Cultural Experts’ Early Engagement with Code. TechTrends 65, 771–784 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-021-00618-4

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