Promoting Computer Science Education through Culturally-Relevant Computing for Educators in Hawai’i

Culturally-relevant pedagogies have been shown to help students from marginalized communities succeed in a variety of fields including STEM-related areas. Culturally-relevant computing values explicit connections between students’ home cultures and the concepts and practices of Computer Science (CS). This presentation will provide an overview of a three-day professional development workshop focused on culturally-relevant computing delivered by the College of Education, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in partnership with the Hawaiʻi State Department of Education to upper elementary educators in Hawaiʻi in June 2022. The professional development workshop is part of a National Science Foundation grant project to prepare elementary teachers to effectively integrate CS education into their teaching through culturally-relevant computing. This three-day, face-to-face workshop introduced educators to the concept of culturally-relevant computing (CRC). The goal was to promote instruction that values CS outcomes while simultaneously valuing culture-based outcomes. The workshop used dialogue and concrete examples to model how to integrate CS into teaching while promoting Hawaii's unique place, culture, and language.

The workshop was designed to be as relevant and hands-on as possible. After a brief introduction to a few key concepts (e.g., culture, cultural relevance, cultural responsiveness), the majority of the workshop focused on experiencing, as learners and instructors, CRC modules designed by the grant team. These concrete examples were used to create shared experiences that will facilitate dialogue around the “what, why, and how” of designing culturally-relevant computing lessons and resources. Presenters will provide reflections about the implementation and on the effectiveness of the CRC professional development workshop. Finally, implications for the design of CRC modules are provided.