TOCE Crtitical Race Theory

What do we mean by “Critical?” A computer science teacher’s reading of Critical Race Theory

Monica Yupa and Chris Proctor

The worlds of K12 computer science (CS) research and practice are in a period of upheaval and paradigm shift. These changes are spurred by widespread recognition of computing’s social importance, its rapid uptake in K12 education, and activism insisting that our chronic inequities in CS education and employment are unacceptable. Fifteen years after Wing’s (2006) assertion that computational thinking is a universally-applicable skillset which everyone would value catalyzed a wave of outreach and research, the cracks have begun to show. (TODO Get specific.) Meanwhile, the cultural background has shifted decisively away from Silicon Valley’s self-cultivated image of detached benevolence, acting from beyond political entanglements with capital, race, nationalism, and colonialism. Several initiatives are underway to articulate a new paradigm of K12 CS research and practice (e.g. Decker and Weiss, 2020), including Proctor, Kafai, and Lui’s (2019) distinction between cognitive, situated, and critical framings of CS learning and their argument for a “patchwork of theories” traversed by “theory dialogue.” While cognitive framings of learning are dominant in research (CITE McGill) and practice (CITE …), situated framings, emphasizing identity building and participation in communities of practice, have gained widespread traction in progressive K12 schools. Critical framings of learning, which directly challenge the work of dominant-culture schools and universities, have not.

This paper is motivated by the authors’ sense that much of the computing education research community is unclear about what is meant by the adjective “critical,” and is skeptical that critical scholarship and pedagogy has a legitimate place in computing education. We draw an analogy between fields of computing education and legal education, and reflect on what computing education could learn from Critical Race Theory’s success in developing a theoretical framework and in enacting material change in how power is exercised through the law.