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Computing Integrated Teacher Education (CITE) @ CUNY

Computing Integrated Teacher Education is a four-year initiative to support CUNY faculty at all ranks to integrate state standards aligned computing content and pedagogy into required education courses, field work and student teaching. Supported by public funding from the New York City Department of Education (NYC DOE) Computer Science for All (CS4All) program and private funding from the Robin Hood Learning + Technology Fund, the initiative will focus on building on and complementing the success of NYCDOE CS4All and pilots to integrate computational thinking at Queens College, Hunter College and Hostos Community College.

The initiative focuses on:
– Supporting institutional change in teacher education programs
– Building faculty computing pedagogical content knowledge through the lens of culturally response-sustaining education
– Supporting faculty research in equitable computing education, inclusive STEM pedagogies, and effects on their students’ instructional practices

Module 6 — Borough of Manhattan Community College

  • Posted by Sara Vogel, PhD. (she/her) on June 7, 2023 at 4:01 pm

    Background

    The CITE Equity Working group has put together some resources to support faculty to think about equity in the context of designing CITE Artifacts

    Task

    • Feel free to annotate our document on Manifold with any noticings, wonderings, resources, and ideas you have as you review it! You will need to go to this site and create an account: https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/

    Then, come back here and share your responses to any number of these prompts:

    • What are some noticings / wonderings you have about how we’ve framed equity in CITE? Any feedback for us?
    • Where do you see connections between the spotlights you read last week and the ideas shared about equity in this week’s resources?
    • What are some of the inequities that you are interested in tackling as you design and roll out CITE artifacts?
    • After reading this, where do you think you might challenge yourself to go next?
Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 17 total)
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  • Ruth Guirguis (she/her/ella)
    Participant
    June 12, 2023 at 3:00 pm

    I am interested in tackling the following inequity:  Mobilizing computing and digital tools for social action. The goal is to accomplish this by incorporating a digital version of the final project in class. Students will have the option of choosing a website or podcast to create awareness of an educational issue.

    Another inequity I am interested in is centering creativity. The maker space provides students with many unplugged activities where students can focus on the process, not the product. Having this space is one way of tackling this inequity, and these spaces need to be fully supported.

    Yolanda Medina (She/her)
    Member
    June 14, 2023 at 11:36 am

    Hi everyone:

    As much as I did not like module 5 because it was repetitive, I really enjoyed module 6. I did notice that the CITE equity framework does not address the racial microaggressions that students and faculty of color experience when trying to enter the world of digital/computer education and STEAM. Many of us have been taught that we do not belong in that world, many times we are not included in the conversation under the assumption that we are incapable. This is not necessarily sometime that happens overtly however, when considering who to involve in particular projects we are excluded from the conversations.

    I would like to create an artifact either about the history of the American Education system and how it has perpetually excluded POC. Another idea that is rising is to work with students to analyze data of how public schools are funded (per pupil expenditures).

    I think I need to go back and read the privacy policies of several of the programs I might be using for my artifact(s).

    Mindi Reich-Shapiro (She/Her)
    Participant
    June 15, 2023 at 12:35 pm

    As an early childhood educator, creating joyful, meaningful learning experiences that integrate computational thinking is really important. However, my research has also focused on democratic classroom practices in early childhood classrooms and on centering the voices and perspectives of young children. We (society, educators, parents) don’t always think about very young children as rights holders, as active agents capable of voicing their beliefs, as competent decision-makers. We protect young children, but we don’t acknowledge their rights to be part of the conversation. My work aims to change that. So, transforming early childhood classrooms to recognize young children as rights holders is also important.

    How does that intersect with CITE and what we are learning here?

    One conversation we have had in our ECE program is about focusing on computational thinking, rather than technologies. On tinkering and building and creating in real world contexts, using hands-on materials. Computational thinking does not require technology.

    Another conversation is about the role of technology in early childhood classrooms. On a personal note, I have a 12-month-old granddaughter. I have watched her pick up the remote control, push buttons, and look over at the television to see the “cause and effect” of her actions. At her birthday party, my nephew let her play with his mobile phone and found a “selfie” she had taken when he looked at his photos later that day. Our children are living in a technological world and they will need to understand it and should be able to create and code and investigate and critically analyze technologies.

    Finally, as a woman who (many years ago) took computer science classes and has always been interested in the sciences, I learned that gender inequity was strongly entrenched in the very foundations of this exciting new world. Women and LGBTQ+ face horrific bullying (e.g., “Gamergate”) in the online tech world, as well as discrimination in all technology-related fields.

    So, I want to find ways to create joyful and meaningful computer-integrated learning experience for young children that center their voices and ideas, provide opportunities for their decision-making, and transform our early childhood classrooms toward justice and equity.

    To explore other questions that were asked above, I do note that gender equity is addressed in the materials we read this week, both Equitable CITE pedagogy and the CS4All equity impact report. However, it felt more like an “add-on” then something truly baked into the mix. We need to think intersectionally. We cannot fully address inequities and injustices toward women of color unless we note that these inequities and injustices are aimed at women and LGBTQ+ communities of all colors.

    Something that fascinated me in the readings last week was the project that integrated translanguaging, using Scratch to create a multi-language learning experience. I also enjoyed learning this week about the project highlighted in the 2019 STEM for All videoshowcase:

    https://stemforall2019.videohall.com/presentations/1547

    That is something that would be challenging for me, as a (sadly) monolingual person, and something that I think is really important, especially for young children who are emergent language and literacy learners and, in NYC, many of whom are learning English as their second language. CITE offers one more way to bring their lived experiences and prior knowledge into our early childhood classrooms.

    Carol Barclay (she/her)
    Member
    June 16, 2023 at 12:43 pm

    When thinking about inequity in infant/toddler care and education, it is immediately clear that the biggest issue is the gross inequity in pay, as well as dignity and professional standing of our workers.

    I am thinking of how I could work on this issue with my students, using computational thinking and data as tools to help them learn to advocate for themselves.

    We could use some published resources, such as the data from the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment.

    https://cscce.berkeley.edu/

    Surfacing this often unspoken problem in the field feels risky, but very worth doing!

    Jean-Yves Plaisir (He/him/and/his)
    Participant
    June 16, 2023 at 12:51 pm

    I find the Equitable CITE Pedagogy frameworks quite relevant, timely, and useful in addressing inequities in our education system in general and particularly necessary for ensuring access to equal education for all children. What’s more, these frameworks can be applied to addressing equity issues in community development initiatives (i.e., housing, workplaces, transportation systems, healthcare systems, and the like). Inequality is visible, tangible, and ubiquitous; however, there seems to be a lack of willpower, deep thinking, approaches, commitment, resources, and tools to tackle it in our society. In so many ways, these frameworks provide the lenses for examining the globality of inequitable practices at the international, national, and local levels. Moreover, the nexus between this week’s resources and last week’s resources is that they both provide us with a set of revolutionary ideas and innovative tools to take on various equity-related challenges within our spheres of influence. As a teacher educator, I plan on using these frameworks to guide teacher candidates address equity challenges in the design and implementation of curricula for learners from differing social, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds (e.g., foreign-born students in the NYC public school system). I was particularly drawn to one of the findings of the CS4All report, which states, “Schools that made greater improvement also enrolled lower percentages of Black and Latinx students on average, pointing to persistent inequities in CS access and participation not only within schools but also across schools.” This finding speaks volumes about the complexity and pervasiveness of inequality even when resources are spent to achieve policy goals. Combatting inequity is a huge challenge; however, after exploring this week’s resources, I feel empowered to do my part in joining this struggle.

    Vee Tapia (she/her/ella)
    Member
    June 16, 2023 at 5:40 pm

    The framework’s simplicity pleased me; several assertions allowed me to reflect on and relate to them. The CITE Pedagogy framework structure is appropriate and enables the discussion of inequities in the educational system. The framework is significant for guaranteeing all children access to an equal education. 

    The framework mentioned that leveraging technology in education to benefit all students creates more inequities. I have witnessed this as an elementary school teacher and get frustrated by the lack of support and programs that must be purchased. I try to find ways to leverage the technology and make it accessible to all students. This is what I’m interested in tackling. I would like to learn about the resources (specifically free), programs, and platforms students and myself can access to enhance their learning.

    Kristin Scarola (she/her)
    Participant
    June 16, 2023 at 6:43 pm

    The CITE framework is well-designed to support teacher educators in applying liberatory practices with students. I was reflecting on the kind of CI that our students and most of us are frequently engaged with: social media. One of the reasons I think it is so appealing, especially the newer platforms like TikTok, is that it provides space for all of us to tell our stories, to respond to news through our lenses. Even teaching approaches are shared through videos and these videos are our classrooms. Our students and teachers often have little agency in their learning and teaching. In this vein, I am interested in how our students can become makers of tools that are directly in relationship to the students they serve. We do this a bit in ECE 211, where students learn to develop curriculum meaningful to a group of learners the see themselves teaching. I often have students push back at the task, knowing that they will have to follow the curriculum they are provided with. We discuss how they might be able to justify teaching to their students based in their knowledge of their specific set of learners alongside the standards and theories. Knowledge of CS has the potential to provide education students with the tools to innovate and design materials that directly respond to their students’ lived experiences and contexts.

    Kristin Scarola (she/her)
    Participant
    June 16, 2023 at 6:52 pm

    The centering of creativity resonated with me as well.

    Michele Bonna (she/her)
    Member
    June 17, 2023 at 1:12 pm

    One of the goals that resonated with me was: Push back on white mainstream assimilative schooling. Seek to affirm, build on, extend learners’ linguistic and cultural practices.
    Some of us may be in positions to audit curriculum, policies, placements, and budgeting to ensure the institution has the capacity for computing integration, that all students have access to those integrations and participate, and that students’ experiences are empowering and fulfilling (Fletcher & Warner, 2021). It forced me to wonder what was considered white mainstream schooling. I had to do some further research to understand the purpose of education and why it hasn’t evolved much over the years as quickly as other industries. Learning why formal education was started helped me understand that in many ways it is an oppressive means of control. To see it done another way would require me to be allowed in spaces that teach differently. I wonder what school looks like for private schooled children vs home schooled children, vs rich children vs poor.

    I guess what I am thinking is how can, someone know, what and how to change in education when they are not exposed to the other side of the coin. In looking at the data, we can see that students of color and girls were offered less opportunities in CS and so from an empirical standpoint, I guess it would be a starting point. But, as I stated in my survey, even if I expose the students to materials once a week, does this still attack the issues of equity if they don’t have devices at home?

    I also found the data from the NYCDOE public schools disappointing. The initiatives to promote CS literacy in schools is still not up to speed. Leadership, decision makers, principals, have to see that these types of courses are just as important as Reading and Math. Until they do, CS is a class that will often be marginalized because scores are driving factors of school success. If there were additional measurements that balanced how schools are rated, perhaps principals would feel more inclined to focus on the arts, tech/steam/CS, as well as core curriculum. CS should be core curriculum.

    Jen Longley (she/her)
    Member
    June 17, 2023 at 10:25 pm

    Of course I want teacher candidates — and pedagogy — to be equity driven/ focused. The reports paint visions of aspirations that we can aim.  I also want teacher candidates when they leave BMCC.  The inequity I am concerned with is preparing teacher candidates to have the knowledge and skills to be successful in their transfer  (4-year) colleges and to pass the NY SED teacher certification exams.

    Last module, I focused on the Plot Plottings which had students look for non-European names of characters in books.  I thought this was a lovely activity; I wonder,  how does the activity support teacher candidates to be successful in the classroom and/or pass teacher certification exams?

    Supporting students to be critical, creative thinkers is my big emphasis.  I am going to keep pushing myself to look at equity in tech related to disability. On a Padlet in a previous module that showed how people were using tech in their lives, my response was “I don’t see anything about disabled people”.  For disabled people, tech is often focused on AT.

    Jillian Crosby
    Participant
    June 19, 2023 at 2:16 pm

    Beginning with the basics, I noticed the wording of the CITE pedagogy is clear, concise, and accessible to a wide range of readers. The full working document on manifold is robust with resources and the table of contents made it easy to navigate.  The equitable CITE pedagogy pushes the current state of teaching into a space that is more accommodating for our diverse population of learners.  The team homed in on the structural inequities within CS education to curate a document that combats these inequities through realistic measures.  Students of all ages want to feel important and need to be empowered.  Creating an environment where pupils are learning alongside professors (or in my case teaching me a thing or two about technology), being empowered to think critically and advocate as they learn about, with, and through technology, participating in the design process as opposed to simply being a consumer are ways to do so. I noticed the goals, approach, and design principles of the CITE equitable pedagogy are aligned with a mission to eradicate the top-down approach to teaching and learning.   I believe utilizing this holistic, less prescriptive approach while including joy and meaningful experiences will allow students to feel comfortable engaging in new modes of education and strengthen class participation and peer to peer collaborations.

    As a woman of color, transforming institutions toward justice is an intricate part of my teaching philosophy and will be addressed throughout the design and implementation of my artifact. The spotlight series in modules 4 and 5 helped me envision how computational and digital tools can be used to support student, family, and community voices (which are typically marginalized) to aid in our fight to transform institutions toward justice.

     

    Aankit Patel (he/him/his)
    Member
    June 20, 2023 at 10:17 am

    This is the right link

    Kirsten Cole (she/her)
    Participant
    June 20, 2023 at 3:35 pm

    I loved reviewing the materials for this module and really appreciate that the CITE project is centering equity in this work. It was upsetting but not surprising to learn that, in the initial roll out of CS4All, the very problems that the program were seeking to address were being reproduced: that access to CS was in fact NOT reaching schools and communities that have been historically neglected and marginalized. I’m glad that this issue has been made visible and I hope that action will be taken to address it as the work continues.

    I’m especially excited to engage with our teacher ed students about these questions related to access and equity. I am concerned that too often technology is introduced into classrooms uncritically and that particularly historically marginalized experiences of “computing” are passive or and lack opportunities for deep meaning making (e.g. keyboarding rather than programming.) I’m looking forward to working with our teacher candidate students to be able to evaluate tools of technology to ensure that these tools support the values and goals of our curriculum and pedagogy (e.g. facilitating student-centered, inquiry based, liberatory learning…) rather that having the technological (robotic? ;-)) tail wag the dog.

    Anthony Heyward
    Member
    June 24, 2023 at 2:04 pm

    The Equitable CITE Pedagogy is a great way to create an ethical foundation for the summer artifact. Empowered learners are joyful and transformative. That values-driven framework always needs to guide our experiments and discoveries. Consequently, I found that to be the case when connecting the faculty spotlights. The professor I spotlighted, Dr. Sunyatta Smith , created a Scratch artifact that was accessible and intuitive regardless of pre-knowledge. 

    I have a clear idea of the direction I want to go in with my artifact. As I think about the design process, I intend to let the creative process play out first. Once the media is crafted I can increase the accessibility for all tinkerers. I’m not focused on the inequities because I believe that the things you focus on are the things you attract. I will be focussing on engagement through cultural reflection. I am designing media that will allow and invite participants to share their own cultural uniqueness in every assignment. 

    The Equitable CITE pedagogy goals are a great anchor for an inclusive lens. It puts learners at the center and creates a context for multi-layered instruction. I will continue to include these ideas in my practice.

    Christopher M Aviles (they/them)
    Member
    June 27, 2023 at 8:34 pm

    One thing I really value about the equity approach being taken in CITE and this experience as a whole, is that it is one that is unafraid to explore certain realities/topics in experience in the world of tech. As someone who graduated college in the last decade and has topics of equity around women in STEM/Tech and other intersectional ways in which this tech movement is leaving certain bodies and experiences behind, which in turn is leaving out certain voices at such a crucial table of voices in the world of tech. 

    I find it particularly interesting how as the world is/has been progressing (and recent regressing) in many ways of inclusion (I’m specifically thinking of the much progress/regression made in marginalized communities like the LGBTQIA+ via legislation), I think it’s interesting how such experiences also being missed or forgotten in other movements in the world (ex: CS4ALL and other tech initiatives). I think a lot about the revolutionary value to have such strong and diverse inclusivity measures when it comes to CS initiatives. I think a lot about CITE’s commitment to leveling the playing field for communities such as Black and Latinx and the potential impact this can have in how certain communities progress in our world through such technological advancements. However, I also think about the world of possibilities this type of work can have when it has more intersectional and marginalized approaches in thought. Considering issues of community safety for the trans women of color community, and how opportunities like self-taught and led computer programming provide a level of safety for trans folks in a world that hasn’t kept up with such a progressing community (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2205.01553.pdf)

    I think there is a lot  I want to dispel in the roll out of this work and through CITE and it being a part of a large and diverse university network, specifically thinking of the faculty enrolled in CITE and the students engaging with each artifact, there is a lot to learn in what students will share. I think a lot about the limitations students I’ve taught already have had with tech and the myriad of issues and solutions students engage with. This is telling of many of the possible reasons our students’ struggle to keep up with the many technologies we seek to utilize in our evolving pedagogies, which the pandemic really showcase both strengths and areas of growth in student understanding. I am sure there is data that is telling of potential areas and limitations our students had and we can actively work toward addressing those (ex: computational thinking, computer literacy, platform exposure).

    Some of the connections I see in the work already and that I am noticing myself would be the need to see how ECE (a recent initiative in NYC within the last decade) and the work of certain CITE faculty (Dr. Tribuzio) have attempted to integrate computational thinking at such a crucial educational point. I think about the ways ECE teachers experience already disproportioned realities within their field. The inclusivity of ECE faculty is also important because this intuitive could lend itself to more seemingly “impactful age groups” like high school and early college. I also see connections with how the work of one faculty aimed to support ethical digital tech literacy in a way that is weary of the ever-changing and fast evolving use of AI, CGI, and ChatGPT to create false narratives and misinformation (Dr. Ascenzi-Moreno). It is important for us as faculty to educate our students to be cautious but also equip them with the tools to understand potential realities and influences.

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