Culturally relevant pedagogy is a framework for teaching that emphasises the importance of incorporating and valuing all learners’ knowledge, ways of learning, and heritage. It promotes the development of learners’ critical consciousness of the world and encourages them to ask questions about ethics, power, privilege, and social justice.
Culturally relevant pedagogy emphasises opportunities to address issues that are important to learners and their communities. Our Roots project seeks to support teachers in implementing culturally responsive practice in their classroom, while investigating how this can be achieved and the opportunities and barriers that present. We are working with a small group of 10 schools during 2022 with a view to extending and deepening our research in future studies.
We will be able to report on this project towards the end of 2022.
Previously, in 2021, we received a special projects grant from SIGCSE (ACM’s Special Interest Group in Computer Science Education). Through this we established a working group of teachers and academics and developed a set of guidelines for teaching. More information can be found about the project here.
Leonard, H., Kirby, D., Sentance, S., Chinaka, L., Deutsch, M., Dimitriadi, Y., & Goode, J. (2021). Culturally relevant and responsive computing: A guide for curriculum design and teaching. Raspberry Pi Foundation.
Leonard, H. C., & Sentance, S. (2021). Culturally-relevant and responsive pedagogy in computing: A Quick Scoping Review. International Journal of Computer Science Education in Schools, 5(2), 3-13. https://doi.org/10.21585/ijcses.v5i2.130
Leonard, H. C., Kirby, D., Sentance, S., Chinaka, L., Deutsch, M., Dimitriadi, Y., & Goode, J. (2021). Localising culturally responsive computing teaching to an English context: developing teacher guidelines. In Understanding Computing Education (Vol 2): Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. Proceedings of the Raspberry Pi Foundation Research Seminars (pp. 56-62). rpf.io/seminar-proceedings-vol-2-leonard-et-al
Leonard, H. C., Quinlan, O., & Sentance, S. (2021, September). Female pupils’ attitudes to computing in early adolescence. In United Kingdom and Ireland Computing Education Research conference. (pp. 1-6). https://doi.org/10.1145/3481282.3481289
Kunkeler, T. & Leonard, H.C. (2021). Computing skills, beliefs and identities in young people from underserved communities. In 2021 Conference on Research in Equity and Sustained Participation in Engineering, Computing, and Technology (RESPECT), 1–5. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/RESPECT51740.2021.9620547
Leonard, H. C. & Kunkeler, T. (2021). Why the ‘digital divide’ does not stop at access. In Understanding Computing Education (Vol 2): Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. Proceedings of the Raspberry Pi Foundation Research Seminars. Available at: http://rpf.io/seminar-proceedings-vol-2-leonard-kunkeler