Title: dissertation Date: 2020-06-01 template: slides .title[ ## SUPPORTING<br> CRITICAL COMPUTATIONAL LITERACIES<br> THROUGH INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING ] Chris Proctor<br> June 1, 2020 <img src="/images/brands/gse.png" alt="Stanford GSE" style="width:160px;"> <img src="/media/slides/2019-buffalo/sketch_4_squat.png" style="width:425px;position:absolute;right:0;bottom:0;"> <!-- <img src="/media/slides/2019-buffalo/slides_qr.png">--> .refs[ chrisproctor.net/slides/dissertation.html<br> Illustrations by Chris Proctor, based on fieldnotes and video ] ??? --- # Committee <table class="labeled-images"> <tr> <td><img width="90px" src="/media/slides/2020_dissertation_defense/blikstein.jpg"></td> <td><h3>Paulo Blikstein</h3>PhD advisor, reading committee</td> </tr> <tr> <td><img width="90px" src="/media/slides/2020_dissertation_defense/barron.jpg"></td> <td><h3>Brigid Barron</h3>PhD co-advisor, reading committee</td> </tr> <tr> <td><img width="90px" src="/media/slides/2020_dissertation_defense/garcia.jpg"></td> <td><h3>Antero Garcia</h3>Dissertation advisor, reading committee</td> </tr> <tr> <td><img width="90px" src="/media/slides/2020_dissertation_defense/pea.jpg"></td> <td><h3>Roy Pea</h3>Reading committee</td> </tr> <tr> <td><img width="90px" src="/media/slides/2020_dissertation_defense/lotan.jpg"></td> <td><h3>Rachel Lotan</h3>University chair</td> </tr> </table> ??? Before I begin, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the members of my committee. Each has been a mentor to me. It has been a phenomenal privilege to study with and learn from you, Paulo, Brigid, Antero, Roy, and Rachel. I would also like to acknowledge Yasmin Kafai, who has also been a mentor and who generously welcomed me into her research group in Philadelphia. I also want to thank all of you for being here. I know this has been a heavy week, so it means a lot to see you. --- background-position: top background-image: url(/media/slides/2019-buffalo/sketch_1_designing_futures.png) background-size: contain .bottom-third[ .half-frame[ ### <span style="color:var(--sketch-line-ruby);">Vision</span><br> An educational system which equitably supports all youth in designing and realizing possible futures by cultivating critical computational literacies ] ] ??? I am working toward an educational system which equitably supports all youth in designing and realizing possible futures by cultivating critical computational literacies. I want to start by bringing you into the world, the paradigm, in which this research takes place. There is a rhetorical move used by a number of critical race scholars who I admire, of laying out up front the things we're not going to argue about. Because Toni Morrison explained to us that the the serious function of racism is distraction. Explaining what we're not going to argue about here will help keep us focused. --- ??? Some of the things we are not going to argue about seriously undermine the legitimacy of this talk. First, most of us are calling in from stolen land. I am speaking to you from West Philadelphia, the homeland of the Lenni-Lenape who are still here. Stanford is built on the homelands of the Muwekma Ohlone tribe, who are also still here. Next, I work in education. Schools in the United States have a lot to answer for. They have been central actors in ongoing colonization, genocide, and white supremacy. And specifically, I work in education research, a field responsible for more than its share of mischief, from eugenics to the erasure of languages and cultures. And we haven't even said anything about computer science. So we need be skeptical about the legitimacy of this talk, honoring a white man and centering his voice, where we mark the conversion of academic capital into a privileged social position. And I'm profiting by saying things that are unsafe some of my colleagues to say. That's what is at stake for me, but maybe you should also feel queasy about your participation. I will note here that Soo-Rae told me ahead of time that she needs to leave early. I begin here not just to avoid distraction, but because this situation is precisely the focus of my dissertation: The challenge of figuring out what's going on, who you are going to be, what you want to say, and how to get heard. In her ethnography of youth activism, Andreanna Clay notes that activism today takes forms not always recognized by older generations of activists because so much work goes into seeking answers to these questions: Who shall I be? How can I speak so that I will be heard? --- .full-bleed[ .half-left[<img height="100%" src="/media/slides/2019-buffalo/sketch_2_pointing.png">] .half-right[ .half-frame[ # <span style="color:var(--sketch-line-purple);">Outline</span> Conceptual framework - Critical computational literacies - Interactive storytelling Studies - Telling stories with Unfold Studio - Connecting across literacies - Learning CS as author and audience - Teaching across literacies ]]] ??? In the next twenty five minutes I will build up a conceptual framework of critical computational literacies, and then will try to give you a coherent summary of four studies. If you want a one-sentence take-away, it is that K12 computer science has a lot to learn from E/LA, and building a bridge between the learning sciences and literacy studies can make space for this dialogue. --- class: callout, invert-slide-number-color # Literacy <img width="80%" src="/media/slides/2020_dissertation_defense/trump_tweet.jpg"> ??? I want to argue that we should be thinking about literacy at three scales. First is the cognitive. Do you know to read this tweet? Would you know how to interact with it? Second is situated. Do you know who is talking, and to whom? What kinds of interactions and positioning are happening here? And third is the critical, the context of the context. How is power shaping the conditions of this encounter? What does it mean that Twitter captioned our feckless president with a warning label? What does it mean that I present him out of focus? --- ## Critical computational literacies <img width="100%" src="/media/slides/2020_dissertation_defense/literacy.png"> .refs[ Freire & Madedo (1987), Ivanič (1998), diSessa (2001), Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain (2001), <br>Wertsch (2009), Lee & Garcia (2014), Vee (2017) ] ??? This diagram is my attempt to bring together conceptions of literacy from the learning sciences and from the field of new literacies. At the top you can see practices at the cognitive, the situated, and the critical scales. One axis of literacy is radial. We can ask questions about literacy practices at and across different scales. Literacy is about communities of practice reading and writing texts, broadly understood. It's about symbolic systems. Different infrastructural technologies--books, Twitter, the law--have different possibilities for practice at each scale. So a second axis is the relationship between infrastructure and practice. I want to show you three ways this construct can be useful. --- ### Theory dialogue: <br>Three scales of computational thinking <img src="/media/slides/2020_dissertation_defense/ct_cl.png" style="width: 500px; margin: -30px auto;" class="center"> .refs[ Kafai, Proctor, & Lui (2019) <br>International Computing Education Research **Best Paper Award** ] ??? First, I want to argue that literacy is a meta-construct that can encourage interdisciplinary theoretical dialogue between different research projects. Computer scientists have been dreaming for seventy years of creating comptuer cultures. Well now the computers are everywhere and we a computer culture, but it is neither inclusive nor just. Various projects described as "computational thinking" have tried to promote various cultural practices by learning how computers work. We organized these into three framings of computational thinking, and suggested litearcy might be a more effective controlling metaphor. --- ### Critical action:<br>Identity authorship and channeling voices - Literacy places.cite[1] are figured worlds, “socially and culturally constructed realms of interpretation.”.cite[2], a cultural runtime environment - Identity is who you are as a participant in a literacy place. The identities we author are constrained by existing subject positions..cite[2] - Voice is how you speak in a literacy place. The voices we channel.cite[3] are constrained by existing genres..cite[4] .refs[ .anchor[1] Dourish (2006) .anchor[2] Holland, et al. (2001) .anchor[3] Proctor & Garcia (2019) .anchor[4] Bakhtin (1981) ] ??? All the realms of our lives are mediated by computational technologies, so many of the problems in our society can usefully be described in terms of literacy. When we find ourselves in a literacy place that is oppressive, which does not have room for our identites and will not hear our voices, what can we do about it? Concretely, "a riot is the language of the unheard." Identity is who you are as a participant in a literacy place. The identities we author are constrained by existing subject positions. I am interested in the ways we can transform subject positions to make room for new identities. Voice is how you speak in a literacy place. The voices we channel are constrained by existing genres. I am interested in the ways we can transform genres to make room for new voices. --- ### Design: Unfold Studio Web application for interactive storytelling using Ink.cite[1] programming language and social media affordances. Design goals: support critical computational literacies, connect across literacies. Workshops at Computer Science Teachers Association, MozFest, Philly National Writing Project. Used in 6 states, internationally; nearly 10k student-authored stories <img src="/media/slides/2020_dissertation_defense/literacy_unfold.png" class="center" style="margin:0 auto; width: 400px;"> .refs[ .anchor[1] Inkle (2016) ] ??? A third use of "critical computational literacies" is as a framework for design. We can cultivate new literacy practices by designing new media infrastructure. This is what I have been trying to do with Unfold Studio, a web application for interactive storytelling which you briefly experienced when you RSVP'ed for this talk. --- background-position: center background-image: url(/media/slides/2020_dissertation_defense/isaiah.png) background-size: contain class: black, invert-slide-number-color ??? In Unfold Studio, users can write interactive stories in a programming language called Ink. They enact choose-your-own-adventure-style games, which you can see running on the right. Users of Unfold Studio can write and share stories, follow users, and keep up with their community via a social feed. Here is a story written by a student in the study. Note the three framings of practice. To write this story, Isiah had to know how to use... --- .full-bleed[ .half-left[<img height="100%" src="/media/slides/2019-buffalo/sketch_2_pointing.png">] .half-right[ .half-frame[ # <span style="color:var(--sketch-line-purple);">Outline</span> Conceptual framework - Critical computational literacies - Interactive storytelling Studies - Telling stories with Unfold Studio - Connecting across literacies - Learning CS as author and audience - Teaching across literacies ]]] --- ## Context 10-week classroom study (27 hours total) set in "Riverton," a small urban/rural midwestern city. 5 sections of 6th grade students, 50/149 students participating in research. Worked closely with 2 teachers & district CS education specialist. School population: 57% white, 25% black, and 10% two or more races. Title I (55% of students eligible for free or reduced lunch). Tenth percentile on state test results. Very little prior exposure to CS. <img src="/media/slides/2019-buffalo/cs_ed_research_chloropleth.png" class="center" style="margin: -20px auto; width: 400px;"> .refs[ Upadhyaya, McGill, & Decker (2020) ] --- ## Four studies ### Design-based research <img src="/media/slides/2020_dissertation_defense/conjectures_v4.png" width="100%"> .refs[ *Conjecture mapping*, Sandoval (2014) ] ??? The Learning Sciences are fundamentally concerned with learning as it happens in context. We often use design-based research to study forms of learning which do not yet exist. The research in this dissertation comes at the end of a sequence of workshops with students figuring out how interactive storytelling might be useful. We can organize design-based research into design questions and theoretical questions. Design questions ask about the relationship between embodied conditions--new tools, new ways of teaching--and their effects. Theoretical questions ask about how the effect of new technologies should be understood as learning. Far too much bad ed-tech stops after the first question: Look, our digital textbooks get more clicks per hour! So these are four questions I explored in my dissertation. I want to share some highlights from each. --- .full-bleed[ .half-left[ .half-frame[ ## <span style="color:var(--sketch-line-cornflower)">How do authors tell stories with Unfold Studio?</span> Qualitative coding of 271 (of 578 total) stories. Coding based on rhetorical analysis.cite[1]: - affordances - rhetoric - figured meanings - identity authorship & channeling voice ]] .half-right[<img height="100%" src="/media/slides/2019-buffalo/sketch_0.png">] ] .refs[ .anchor[1] Proctor & Blikstein (2019) ] --- background-position: center background-image: url(/media/slides/2020_dissertation_defense/ch_3_ps_full.png) background-size: contain ## Results --- ## Discussion - **Critical uses of point of view**: Most stories written in first and second person; many used point of view to enact in-story identity authorship and voice. - **Manipulating player agency** for immersion and interactivity. - **Novelization of social media genres**: Used text-message affordances to tell stories about how text messaging shapes social life. - **Critical discourse models**.cite[1]: Interactive stories as microworlds.cite[2] allowing social experience and analysis. .refs[ .anchor[1] Proctor & Blikstein (2019) .anchor[2] Papert (1980) ] --- .full-bleed[ .half-left[ .half-frame[ ## <span style="color:var(--sketch-line-cornflower)">How do authors connect across literacies?</span> Three case studies of individual students using stories to author identites and channel voices, drawing on existing literacies. ]] .half-right[<img height="100%" src="/media/slides/2019-buffalo/sketch_0.png">] ] --- ## Identity authorship and channeling voice across literacies -- "[In the original story] she had been falling in love with another boy and her friend and I changed it to another girl, just to make it a bit more believable that she felt kind of isolated from everybody else in the Russian village. So I was kind of using it as a symbolism and also just for fun because I’ve always known that Sveta is a Russian name but I’ve never been able to use " (Interview 3). -- “I agreed with the guy that runs the podcast. [The original version of Snegurochka] didn’t have that great of an ending. Like it was kind of a lazy ending almost” (Interview 3). -- “Like if you don’t pay attention to the Snegurochka story you might go, ‘Oh, she’s falling in love with Sveta.’ You won’t actively be at the spot of, ‘Oh, she’s gay’” (Interview 3). -- <img width="100%" src="/media/slides/2020_dissertation_defense/ch_4_rasputin_story_readings.png"> --- ## Infrastructure supports<br> connecting across literacies -- “If there’s a story with tons of different possibilities that interlock and weave together, that’s cool to think about. That’s why I like Unfold Studio. I want to be an author when I grow up, and with coding you have to think of what to do before you do it. I have to think ahead of time, what’s it going to be like when I put this in?” (Interview 3) -- I shared that my motivation for creating Unfold Studio was to help people connect computer science to other forms of expression they already cared about. He replied, “That happened for me. Do you know why? Because I really love books, and stories, and things like that. And I really like messing around with things, changing them… It’s like I’m a fictional engineer” (Interview 2). --- ## Infrastructure supports<br> connecting across literacies <img width="100%" src="/media/slides/2020_dissertation_defense/ch_4_dark_room.png"> .refs[ *A Dark Room.* Doublespeak Games (2013) ] --- ## Discussion - Interactive storytelling supports identity authorship and channeling voices in CS education. - Ideas from computer science can support critical engagement with infrastructure of out-of-school literacies. ??? Connecting across literacies is important in both directions. We can go beyond limp efforts at "inclusion" in computer science and support students in producing legitimate forms of computer science that are assertively andiracist, feminist, queer, or whatever they need them to be. And from school-based literacy places, we can support youth in bringing powerful ideas from computer science out into their lives. This could not be more urgent. We are currently designing and implementing a CS course at a school in Hong Kong. What do the future leaders of Hong Kong need to know about In case you missed it yesterday, the attorney general classified Antifa as a terrorist organization, thereby turning the weapons of our massive state surveillance system against protesters. This is how I see computer science having critical power. HK & Barr --- .full-bleed[ .half-left[ .half-frame[ ## <span style="color:var(--sketch-line-cornflower)">Does literacy participation support computer science learning?</span> 1. Is participation in interactive story-based literacy associated with computer science learning? - Authorship? - Audience? 2. If so, is this association mediated by individual student practice in writing their own stories? ]] .half-right[<img height="100%" src="/media/slides/2019-buffalo/sketch_0.png">] ] ??? With this context, I would like to share with you a particular research study. Late-state design-based research tends to move more toward an emphasis on instumentation and research efficiency (CITE Schwartz...) I'm focused on two research questions here: 1. Is participation in interactive story-based literacy associated with computer science learning? 2. If so, is this association mediated by individual student practice in writing their own stories? --- background-position: center background-image: url(/media/slides/2019-buffalo/rq1_path.png) background-size: contain ## Research question 1 ??? Here's RQ1 --- background-position: center background-image: url(/media/slides/2019-buffalo/rq2_path.png) background-size: contain ## Research question 2 ??? And here's RQ2. --- ## Data source: CS learning Interactive story portfolio submission, assessed using a rubric aligned with K-12 CS Framework's .cite[1] Control and Variables concepts. <style>table {border-collapse: collapse;} th, td {border: 2px solid; font-size: 0.8em;padding: 4px;} .rubric {font-family: Garamond;}</style> .rubric[ Level | Control criteria | Variable criteria ----- | ------------- | -------------- Advanced<br> (4 points) | Meets criteria for Proficient AND use of control adds meaning to the story. Uses an advanced control structure. | Meets criteria for Proficient AND use of state adds meaning to the story. Uses at least one declared variable. Proficient<br> (3 points) | Uses diverts correctly and meaningfully to control story execution. | Uses variables (either built-in or declared) to keep track of something in the story and using it to change what happens in the future. Basic <br>(2 points) | The use of control might be based closely on another story. The use of control might “check the boxes” but not have much effect on the story. May include minor errors in usage. | The use of state might be based closely on another story. The use of state might “check the boxes” but not have much effect on the story. May include minor errors in usage. Below basic (1 point) | Does not meet criteria for Basic. | Does not meet criteria for Basic. ] .refs[ .anchor[1] *K-12 CS Framework* (2016) ] ??? Don't need to read the whole table. But this is what I used to assess students' summative performance. Students were familiar with the rubric; we worked with it in class. --- .full-bleed[ .half-left[<img height="100%" src="/media/slides/2019-buffalo/literacy_log.png">] .half-right[ .half-frame[ ## Data Source: Literacy participation 500k events from Unfold Studio log Build literacy graph: interactions between users and stories Author score: Number of other user interactions with a user's stories Audience score: Number of interactions with other users' stories ]]] ??? We operationalize literacy events as actions taken by users in the process of reading and writing stories, as well as browsing, searching, following other users, and commenting on stories. In this study, we consider only those literacy events in which one user views, loves, or forks (makes a copy of) another user’s story. These interactions feature two important, reciprocally-connected roles, those of author and audience. As described in the background, we view these as important learning opportunities within a literacy place grounded in, but extending beyond, the classroom. Each literacy event can be considered as a link in a bipartite network of authors and stories. We define a user’s author score as the number of literacy events in which another user interacted with one of the user’s stories. Similarly, a user’s audience score is the number of literacy events in which that user interacted with a story written by another user. Figure 2 shows a histogram of participants’ author and audience scores. Thirty of the fifty study participants have author scores of zero because they chose not to make any of their stories publicly visible to their peers. (While this group wrote fewer stories on average than authors with positive author scores, they still wrote an average of 8 stories, including stories for the summative portfolio.) Note that the sums of all author and audience scores are not equal because these scores consider interactions with all "Literacy App" users. Some participants wrote stories which became popular on the site beyond the classes involved in this study, and they were occasionally inspired by stories written by external authors. For example, a student at another school wrote a story in which the player walks through an imagined monument to LGBTQ heroes from history. Several students pointed this story out as they were planning their own writing. --- ## Authorship and audience as forms of participation <img src="/media/slides/2019-buffalo/author_audience_hist_a.png" width="100%"> ??? We operationalize literacy events as actions taken by users in the process of reading and writing stories, as well as browsing, searching, following other users, and commenting on stories. In this study, we consider only those literacy events in which one user views, loves, or forks (makes a copy of) another user’s story. These interactions feature two important, reciprocally-connected roles, those of author and audience. As described in the background, we view these as important learning opportunities within a literacy place grounded in, but extending beyond, the classroom. Each literacy event can be considered as a link in a bipartite network of authors and stories. We define a user’s author score as the number of literacy events in which another user interacted with one of the user’s stories. Similarly, a user’s audience score is the number of literacy events in which that user interacted with a story written by another user. Figure 2 shows a histogram of participants’ author and audience scores. Thirty of the fifty study participants have author scores of zero because they chose not to make any of their stories publicly visible to their peers. (While this group wrote fewer stories on average than authors with positive author scores, they still wrote an average of 8 stories, including stories for the summative portfolio.) Note that the sums of all author and audience scores are not equal because these scores consider interactions with all "Literacy App" users. Some participants wrote stories which became popular on the site beyond the classes involved in this study, and they were occasionally inspired by stories written by external authors. For example, a student at another school wrote a story in which the player walks through an imagined monument to LGBTQ heroes from history. Several students pointed this story out as they were planning their own writing. --- count:false ## Authorship and audience as forms of participation <img src="/media/slides/2019-buffalo/author_audience_hist_b.png" width="100%"> --- .full-bleed[ .half-left[ .half-frame[ ## Data source: Stories <img src="/media/slides/2019-buffalo/state_flow_hist_vertical_a.png" style="margin-top: -24px;"> ]] .half-right[<img width="100%" src="/media/slides/2019-buffalo/unfold_zdev_code_focus_a.png" style="margin-top: 36px;">] ] ??? Finally, we consider the content of students’ interactive stories, which are the primary artifacts created on "Literacy App". Over the course of the unit, the 48 authors participating in the research wrote 640 stories. In this study, we conduct static program analysis of the code from the final state of each story. (The left half of Figure 1 shows an excerpt of a story’s code.) Following a common strategy of counting syntactic elements which map to concepts (e.g. Brennan & Resnick, 2012; Fields, et al., 2016), we count the use of syntactic elements which correspond to flow and state, the two primary content knowledge goals of the unit. We chose to count the number of diverts in each story as a measure of practicing flow. An interactive story can be visualized as a directed graph, where each knot, or chunk of textual content, is connected to other knots by edges. Each divert (->) implements an edge, so the number of diverts in a story corresponds to the number of edges in its story graph. We defined a students' flow practice score as the logarithm of the maximum number of diverts in any of an author’s stories. (Using the sum across an author’s stories would be artificially inflated when authors repeatedly forked their own stories, and using an average would be artificially deflated for authors who made numerous throwaway stories for notes or to test out constructs.). We conducted a similar analysis for stories' use of state which will be reported in a subsequent publication. --- count:false .full-bleed[ .half-left[ .half-frame[ ## Data source: Stories <img src="/media/slides/2019-buffalo/state_flow_hist_vertical_b.png" style="margin-top: -24px;"> ]] .half-right[<img width="100%" src="/media/slides/2019-buffalo/unfold_zdev_code_focus_b.png" style="margin-top: 36px;">] ] ??? --- ## RQ1 Results Is participation in interactive story-based literacy associated with CS learning? <img src="/media/slides/2019-buffalo/technical_score_regplots_a.png" width="100%"> ??? Our first research question asks whether there is an association between participation in the literacy place, either as author or as audience, and performance on the summative assessment. Using standard OLS regression, we found a statistically-significant association between both author and audience scores and summative performance. Plots of these associations are shown in Figure 3 and regression tables are shown in Table 2. We additionally tried several models including measures of students’ prior interest and experience with Computer Science and English/Language Arts (using the survey instrument from blinded). These covariates both had statistically-significant associations with summative performance. However, when they were added to the models shown in Figure 3 and Table 2, author and audience scores remained statistically-significant and their coefficients did not change much. Therefore, we do not include these covariates in the following results. Figure 3 shows the positive association between technical score and both author score and audience score. Students who participated more in the literacy place, as authors and as audience, tended to have higher scores on the summative assessment of Computer Science content. This suggests that writing for an audience, or participating as an audience of others’ work, was associated with better performance on the technical summative assessment. There was a substantial correlation between author score and audience score (r2 = 0.36), which explains the collapse of model (3) in Table 2 due to collinearity. In other words, students with high author scores were reasonably likely to also have high audience scores. Intuitively, this is not surprising, as we hypothesize that these are reciprocal, dialogic relationships. --- count:false ## RQ1 Results Is participation in interactive story-based literacy associated with CS learning? <img src="/media/slides/2019-buffalo/technical_score_regplots_b.png" width="100%"> --- background-position: center background-image: url(/media/slides/2019-buffalo/results_1_path.png) background-size: contain ## RQ1 Results .caption-bottom-left[ <span style="width: 30px;display:inline-block;">\*</span>p < 0.1<br> <span style="width: 30px;display:inline-block;">\*\*</span>p < 0.05<br> <span style="width: 30px;display:inline-block;">\*\*\*</span>p < 0.01<br><br> ] --- background-position: center background-image: url(/media/slides/2019-buffalo/results_2_path.png) background-size: contain ## RQ2 Results .caption-bottom-left[ <span style="width: 30px;display:inline-block;">\*</span>p < 0.1<br> <span style="width: 30px;display:inline-block;">\*\*</span>p < 0.05<br> <span style="width: 30px;display:inline-block;">\*\*\*</span>p < 0.01<br><br> ] --- background-position: center background-image: url(/media/slides/2019-buffalo/results_author_context_path.png) background-size: contain ## Authorship and CS learning<br>Controlling for prior interest .cite[1] .caption-bottom-left[ <span style="width: 30px;display:inline-block;">\*</span>p < 0.1<br> <span style="width: 30px;display:inline-block;">\*\*</span>p < 0.05<br> <span style="width: 30px;display:inline-block;">\*\*\*</span>p < 0.01<br><br> ] .refs[ .anchor[1] Friend (2015) ] --- background-position: center background-image: url(/media/slides/2019-buffalo/results_audience_context_path.png) background-size: contain ## Audience and CS learning<br> Controlling for prior interest .cite[1] .caption-bottom-left[ <span style="width: 30px;display:inline-block;">\*</span>p < 0.1<br> <span style="width: 30px;display:inline-block;">\*\*</span>p < 0.05<br> <span style="width: 30px;display:inline-block;">\*\*\*</span>p < 0.01<br><br> ] .refs[ .anchor[1] Friend (2015) ] --- ## Discussion (RQ1) Literacy participation, as an author and as audience, was associated with better performance on a summative assessment of Computer Science content. (RQ2) Both associations were significantly mediated by practice with writing computational content in stories. Supports the hypothesis that a literacy-based approach to introductory Computer Science can be an effective learning environment. Part of a larger argument that this can also support criticality. ??? In this paper, we have shown that literacy participation, as an author and as audience, was associated with better performance on a summative assessment of Computer Science content. Furthermore, we showed that both associations were mediated by flow practice, a measure of students individually engaging with computer science concepts in their own stories. These results support our broad hypothesis that a literacy-based approach to introductory Computer Science can be an effective learning environment. The fact that these results were not substantially affected by the inclusion of covariates measuring students’ prior interest in Computer Science and writing suggests that this approach could be particularly effective for broadening participation in computing practice. Indeed, in the exit survey, numerous students related that they had not expected to enjoy programming. Even though these associations remain when controlling for prior interest in Computer Science and English/Language Arts, it is possible that we have missed hidden variables accounting for both students’ participation and their scores on the summative assessment. Moreover we have so far only provided a sketch of an argument for these results’ external validity. Our next steps will involve rigorous qualitative analysis showing that the measures used here accurately describe students’ experiences of participation and learning. In the course of this analysis, we developed author score and audience score as measures of participation in the classroom literacy place. In this study, we treated these as contextual factors and the summative portfolio evaluation as the final measure of learning. In that respect, this study is similar to other research showing the importance of sociocultural factors. However, we can also view these results as showing alignment between a traditional cognitive (or competency-based) measure of learning, and two measures based on students' participation in a community of computational practice. In future research, we intend to center participation in a community of practice as a primary form of learning, producing quantitative measures which can be held up against cognitive assessments. The challenge then will be to justify that the participation, the community of practice, and participants' enacted identities are legitimate forms of Computer Science. Social learning analytics combined with qualitative analysis will be invaluable tools in this task, as they will provide a high-granularity view of the nature of students' practice. It seems likely that author and audience scores are a coarse view on emergent dynamics in students’ trajectories of participation; our future research will further explore these dynamics. --- .full-bleed[ .half-left[ .half-frame[ ## <span style="color:var(--sketch-line-cornflower)">How can we equitably teach across literacies?</span> Qualitative analysis of fieldnotes, planning & reflection meetings, & interviews with teachers, using transliteracies pedagogical framework. .cite[1] ]] .half-right[<img height="100%" src="/media/slides/2019-buffalo/sketch_0.png">] ] .refs[ .anchor[1] Smith, Stornaiuolo, & Philips (2018) ] --- class:full-bleed-layout invert-slide-number-color <iframe src="https://research.unfold.studio/stories/9300" style="width: 100%; height: 100%; border: none;"> </iframe> ??? Led to powerful conversations about our worlds and who we can be in them. --- background-image: url(/media/slides/2019-buffalo/transliteracies.png) background-size: 100% 100% class: invert-slide-number-color ## <span style="color:white;">Transliteracy<br> Pedagogy</span> ??? "Maybe I'm projecting, but I feel like they aren't recognizing that their little piece of the world is worth telling about." --- ## Transliteracy pedagogy She was telling it to me and then what I was doing was prompting her. So she'd like, "We played at the basketball court." And I'd be like, "What's it look like? How many hoops are there? What's around it?" And then the more I asked her questions, the more details I got out of her. But her original idea was, "My idea is I want to play basketball and when I shoot a basket, I'm going to go through the hoop and I'm going to go somewhere else." It's awesome. So then that was like, "So are you the basketball? Are you jumping up through the hoop? Are you diving through?" And her idea is that it takes her right into an NBA game. teams. (Debrief meeting 1) ??? Also, importance of performance in the classroom --- ## Transliteracy pedagogy I think it's a new type of thinking. It's kind of like role playing. You can imagine scenarios. Yeah, okay, so we have been part of workshops, faith or otherwise, where you'll role play it. But, if you and I are in a workshop and someone has presented a goal, or we've had some experience together, you have your version. If we're role playing, you'll have your thoughts on who you're gonna be working with later and I'll have my thoughts on mine. We're just going to be presenting our own versions and neither of us will be satisfied. So now we're prepared to do well? No! We have some context, fine. But this is somewhat different. If we're playing together, creating together, I help you create yours, you help me create my story, and this is the realistic possibilities that I would think of and that you would think of. And like 'Oh, why would you even say that?' --- class: center background-position: top background-image: url(/media/slides/2019-buffalo/sketch_3_talk.png) background-size: contain .bottom-third.center[ # <span style="color:var(--sketch-line-green);">Conclusions</span> ] --- ## Contributions - Critical computational literacies as construct supporting interdisciplinary research - Interactive storytelling as critical discourse model for representing and analyzing computational literacies - Practical and theoretical justification for literacy-based K12 computer science ??? I would like to summarize a few big ideas that have come out of this research. First, the construct of critical computational literacies answers a call for more integration of the learning sciences with new literacies. This is particularly important for K12 CS education, which is decades behind on central questions about culturally-supporting and -sustaining pedagogy, whether and how to teach the culture of power, and who should be making these decisions. Second, interactive storytelling is a promising medium for telling stories and analyzing our computational lives. Our computational interfaces profoundly shape our literacy practices (hashtag looting), and we need tools for analyzing these. And third, despite calls to unify CS education behind a single framework, I have made an argument that part of literacy education needs to be participating in its definition. Otherwise literacy looks a lot more like colonialism, somebody else's system of values that probably puts you in marginalized subject positions. I believe our schools can be places where we develop and practice many different forms of computing, and where those communities define their own understandings of excellence. --- -- ### The real reason that nonviolence is considered to be a virtue in Negroes—I am not speaking now of its tactical value, another matter altogether—is that white men do not want their lives, their self-image, or their property threatened. .refs[Baldwin (1962)] ??? I began this talk by questioning its legitimacy, and specifically the legitimacy of the literacies which authorize it. If the last week, and the decades and centuries that preceded it, have not shaken your faith in the literacies which together are called the united states, I would be happy to recommend some literacy resources which have been helpful to me. I don't think we're going to find that legitimacy. So what I propose instead is that we try to better understand where we're at, which identites we can author, which voices we can channel, which can bring us closer to a just and peaceful world. It took all of you to get me here, and so I want to express my gratitude and enthusiasm to keep doing this work together. I spent the weekend re-reading James Baldwin, who speaks powerfully to me. I would like to close with a couple of quotations which I think are pertinent to They're not inspiring exactly, but they feel right for the moment. --- ### If we—and now I mean the relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks, who must, like lovers, insist on, or create, the consciousness of the others—do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world. If we do not now dare everything, the fulfillment of that prophecy, re-created from the Bible in song by a slave, is upon us: <br>God gave Noah the rainbow sign, No more water, the fire next time! .refs[Baldwin (1962)] --- .title[ ## SUPPORTING<br> CRITICAL COMPUTATIONAL LITERACIES<br> THROUGH INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING ] Chris Proctor<br> June 1, 2020 <img src="/images/brands/gse.png" alt="Stanford GSE" style="width:160px;"> <img src="/media/slides/2019-buffalo/sketch_4_squat.png" style="width:425px;position:absolute;right:0;bottom:0;"> .refs[ cproctor@stanford.edu<br> chrisproctor.net/slides/dissertation.html ] ??? Now, I would be delighted to take your questions. --- class: full-bleed-layout <video controls autoplay="true" src="/media/slides/2019-buffalo/literacy_graph.mp4" width="100%" style="margin-top: -20px;"> .caption-bottom-left[ <span style="color:#833457;">⬤</span> User<br> <span style="color:#715884;">⬤</span> Story ]