SCRATCH SPACE FOR WRITING: ECE/CT

The following was from sometime in 2022; not sure when.

Christine presented a view of two fields, CT and ECE, each of which has its own internal division between intrinsic learning (learning for itself, for the present) and teleological goals, preparing learners for a future elsewhere. In Christine’s AERA diagram, CT’s

Meanwhile, ECE has its own teleology: getting students school-ready, heading off

I was dubious about the existence of CT’s articulation of intrinsic learning for early childhood. Lurking just behind every Kibo and Code-a-pillar is the idea of computational thinking, which is itself fundamentally teleological. Wing (2006) is oriented to a future in which computational ways of thinking about the world are privileged over other sensemaking: “Computational thinking will have become ingrained in everyone’s lives…when trees are drawn upside down,” imagining a future in which tree-as-data-structure has eclipsed the ecological concept of a tree (p. 34). Aho (2012), attempting to clarify what constitutes CT, argues that its essence is the practice of representing problems in computational terms. In this view, supporting children’s growth toward comptuational thinking means helping them learn to see the world in a specific way; the end is clearly in sight.

How do we reconcile these?

In contrast to Freire’s emphasis on possibility and hope (as glossed by Vossoughi & Gutiérrez (2016)), computational thinking is proleptic in a way which forecloses futures.

Can we contrast the teleological with the proleptic?

“second, we argue that literacy pedagogy now must account for the burgeoning variety of text forms associated with information and media technologies” (61)

-> But extend this, making the point from Beyond technesis that we don’t just want to think of tech as representation of other forms. It’s actively doing interpretation too. From a reader-response perspective, IF does a lot more. Always, a text is a provocation to response on the part of the reader. But now in very real ways, the text can respond to the reader too.

“We decided that the outcomes of our discussions could be encapsulated in one word–multiliteracies–a word we chose to describe two important arguments we might have with the emerging cultural, institutional, and global order: the multiplicity of communication channels and media, and the increasing saliency of cultural and linguistic diversity. The notion of multiliteracies supplements traditional literacy pedagogy by addressing these two related aspects of textual multiplicity.”

“A pedagogy of multiliteracies, by contrast, focuses on modes of representation much broader than language alone. These differ according to culture and context, have specific cognitive, cultural, and social effects.” ((64)

–> Use this to position my inquiry into literacy as a valid topic for learning sciences. It’s not so different from diSessa’s framing of literacy, as a specific sort of situated practice. [Gee too]

–> Also on 64, summary of two main arguments. Can my work be said to bring these two together?

In a social literacy space, reading and writing break down as two distinct practices.

p. 70, changing private lives, discusses conversationality in public space. This relates to one of the things we’re doing with Paly Study.

“We cannot remake the world through schooling, but we can instantiate a vision through pedagogy that creates in microcosm a transformed set of relationships and possibilities for social futures, a vision that is lived in schools. (72) This is the goal of Paly Study.

“curriculum is a design for social futures” (73). Connect to Vossoughi & Guiterrez’s emphasis on Freirian prolepsis in their article in Power and Privilege in the Learning SCiences.

Could I take up the Available Designs / Design / the Redesigned as a way of talking about Paly journalis,? WHat woul be the advantage?

“Our view of mind, society, and learning is based on the assumption that the human mind is embodied, situated, and social” (82) –> This should be the same as my starting place, and the focus on my conceptual framework.

(84) Situated practice

“Critical in the phrase ‘critical understanding’ means conscious awareness and control over the intra-systematic relations of a system.” This is abstract, but it goes toward my own argument that critical understanding means making the process of meaning-making part of the content.

I can use this article to structure the progression of my studies: toward critical framing.

–> Also, in the introduction, a note about the artificiality of the presentation, surfacing the metalinguistic aspects of the process, to make it most useful to practitioners. There is a sort of anachronism to the thinking presented.

It has been interesting to feel how my QP writes itself as I read. After finishing an article (or after going for a run and mulling it all over), I find myself in a state of clarity that feels precious and fragile, and I need to go write as soon as possible before it dissipates.

RER ECE

Background: Computational thinking

Sources: What is computational thinking? - Prior debate framed CT as an abstract-thinking counterpart to programming, earlier era of programming-focused CS education. (Aho, X; Denning, X) - Prior debade framed CT as the basis of transferrable and interdisciplinary computing (Wing, 2006). This was an argument for a broader understanding of the relevance and applicability of computing. - Grover & Pea (2013) note this “definitional confusion” (p. 38) and summarize two National Academy of Science workshops on defining CT (NRC, 2010) and teaching CT (NRC, 2011) “CT’s essence is thinking like a computer scientist when confronted with a problem.” - The K-12 CS Framework (2016), intended as a high-level consensus document to be the basis for state curriculum standards, defines CT as a sequence of practices central to CS, which is oriented toward “developing computational artifacts” (p. 67). The K-12 CS Framework defines CT as “recognizing and defining computational problems,” “developing and using abstractions,” “creating computational artifacts,” and “testing and refining computational artifacts.” This process-based approach to defining CS as understanding and acting on the computational world is closely-aligned with the Royal Society’s (2012) definition of CT. - CT has come to signify an “operational definition” of K-12 computer science, so the tensions surrounding its definition can be read as reflections of longstanding tensions in priorities for K-12 education. - Kafai, Proctor, and Lui (2019) identified three framings of CT: cognitive, situated, and critical, which engage literacy skills at different scales. (Hook into ECE framings of literacy). Propose “computational literacy” as a meta-framework building on diSessa’s (2000) “comptuational literacy,” which has room for

In recent reviews of early childhood CT: - What definitions are used? (How do they sit within the field described above?)

TODO:

• INCLUDE Demystifying Comptuational Thinking. Valerie J. Shute a, *, Chen Sun a, Jodi Asbell-Clarke