Yasmin ER V4

One thing I think has been a persistent challenge is computer scientists feeling that their form of literacy is extremely powerful, lucrative, and transformative, and trying to think about how they could share that power more broadly, knowing that computer science education has had low rates of success in the past.

From this impulse, several approaches have emerged. One sees the physical computer as scaffolding supporting ways of thinking which are where the real value lies for a generalist. From this perspective, an early divide emerged between computational thinking, as an abstract set of problem-solving skills and dispositions, and programming, as the concrete practice which might be of more value to specialists. Unfortunately, computer science divorced from computers is a fuzzy target, particularly when offered to non-computer scientists who don’t have programming experience to index. It is as if we were trying to teach the abstract skills of going shopping at a grocery store to people who have never needed to eat.

Another approach to computational thinking sees the relationship between people and computers as distributed, embodied, and sustained. In this view, practice-with-computers is qualitatively different from that without. We start to consider new identities and new kinds of participation.

In the previous section, we showed that multiple framings of computational are needed to describe the variety of goals included under computational thinking. Rather than just taxonomizing these framings, however, we seek a united construct which can accommodate them and put them in relation to one another. Numerous researchers (CITE) have proposed literacy as a construct fitting the bill. [diSessa’s definition here.] Drawing on Barton & Hamilton (1998) and Gee (1996), Jacob & Warchsauer (2018) define literacy as “a set of practices situated in a sociocultural context that utilizes external technological media to enable expression.” Having sketched how we might reframe computational thinking in terms of computational literacy, we will now explore why such a construct is useful beyond a desire for theoretical elegance.

First, computational literacy is a useful framework for design. As we argued in the previous paper, when we consider different framings, literacy provides a space that can encompass them all. Rather than competing with each other for emphasis, we can see each as part of a patchwork, bringing focus to different parts of the A design problem

Second, computational literacy is useful for imagining outcomes. Literacy also helps us aim at different kinds of educational outcomes. The role of schools and education in society is complex, and as educators we ought to be concerned with the big picture, not just focused on delivering services (there is a helpful analogy to be made here to medicine). We don’t just want cognitive outcomes, with students having the ability to pass a test of computer science–with the presumption that the skills measured by the test are well-aligned with a fixed external set of opportunities. We also want to think about [SITUATED] the kinds of communities that come to exist in schools and extend beyond them, and [CRITICAL] how schools and education participate in defining what it means to be literate and illiterate. Critical views of litearcy emphasize that its role in setting up and justifying social hierarchies may be as important as its instrumental roles in supporting cognition, collaboration, and communication. Consider, for example, the proposition that the social function of computer science may run parallel to that of race in defining who deserves what.

There are numerous frameworks already doing this work. For example, connected learning (CITE) sees schools as nodes within learning ecologies, where learning opportunities may exist all over. In this view,

Leads to practices such as having the entire school present an exposition of its work for evaluation by the community. (High Tech High).

Multiliteracies.

These perspectives

To bring in other theoretical perspectives. Some of the

[RESEARCH AGENDA] These perspectives will be particularly valuable guides for studying some of the phenomena which occur within literacy: identity, life trajectories beyond school, subject position, ideology.

For example, linguistic anthropology of education… social formations. Literacy scholars. Gee: discourse, Discourse. Perspectives from linguistic anthropology could be helpful in… Fundamentally identify abstraction as a mechanism of oppression. (Silverstein, 2003)

And ultimately, we want

Each framing allows us to

Funds of knowledge

as we propose reframing computational thinking in terms of computational literacy, we caution readers that

Finally, we note that the term “literacy” is often used in a reductive or superficial manner, as a synonym for gneral familiarity. This is not what we have in mind.

Following Eisenhart, the next step is to enact it. But we need a clear vision.

==== WRITING NOTES 2020-01-12 =============== Computational thinking for all. But everyone’s computational thinking. Cognitive -> metacognitive Situated -> critical

What I’m missing is the role of diverse communities in constituting and legitimizing computing practice. We can draw an analogy to math, where the turn to practice (e.g. Boaler’s reform math)

Just as we would not argue that the truth value of mathematical statements is culturally relative, we are not arguing for ambiguity

, or that there ought to

What is culturally-relative are the communities and practices in which these are taken up and put to use. Also which parts of CS are seen as fundamental.

What’s important is the role of individuals and communities

Vygotsky’s understanding of the relationship between social practice and concept.