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

• Equitable CITE Pedagogy: Putting it into Praxis – Long document on Manifold
• Interactive version of our goals, approaches, design principles and moves

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?

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

• Equitable CITE Pedagogy: Putting it into Praxis – Long document on Manifold
• Interactive version of our goals, approaches, design principles and moves

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?

[Yasmin Morales Alexander]

Hola, I think what stood out to me the most about the ways in which equity is framed in CITE are the references/citations. While the references used are very familiar to me (as I rely on them often) in my own work, to see/read them in the context of digital literacies is a real “eye-opener” for me and it is making me think about my own and my students’ equitable experiences in and with technology. For example, “equity as access” made me think of Covid and the challenges that educators experienced when the whole world seemingly went “virtual”. I really appreciate CITE’s “take” on issues of equity, critical pedagogy, and social justice. Beyond, helping me “see” these concepts within digital literacies, the framework is very much aligned with my own pedagogy. More specifically, one of the goals: “empowering learners & communities” was a primary goal of Dr. Espinosa’s “plotting the plots” artifact as she talked about co-learning with her students and wanting her students to feel empowered by engaging in digital literacies that were directly connected to their own multilingual identities-brilliant, really!

For my own work, I am always pushing the needle on “empowering learners” “centering learners”, “critical reflection”, etc. I think I want to use this CITE opportunity to move towards purposefully “promoting joyful learning”. I think that education has a real crappy way of sucking the joy of out of learning and I want that to look different for me as an Instructor and definitely for my students.

[Anonymous]

Equitable CITE Pedagogy is so thorough and thought-provoking. Great appreciation to all who made a contribution to this pedagogy. I resonate a lot with the argument about explicitly defining what “equity” means, as well as defining many other similar terms like “inclusion” and “culturally responsive/sustaining”. We need to situate our meaning making of these terms in the context (e.g., global north v.s. global south). I also truly appreciate CITE’s emphasize on learner’s agency and knowledge. For example, I observed many white teachers who claimed that their classroom teaching is culturally and linguistically responsive/sustaining. However, their understandings of students’ culture are often essentialized and stereotyped, in other words, culture under the white gaze. They failed to involve students in sharing and exploring what culture and language means to them.

Last week, I shared that I was thinking about having teacher candidates create digital stories such as a digital photo essay, video, podcast about their teaching experience and pedagogy and then teach their K-12 students how to use different digital storytelling tools to share a social or educational issue that they care about. I had a new idea after reading the Equitable CITE Pedagogy. I am thinking maybe I can analyze teacher candidates’s lesson plans and to see what assistive technologies they incorporated in their teaching, their justifications of using certain AT devices, student population they centered on etc. And then share my findings with my teacher candidate to have discussions about AT related equity issues. Just some initial thoughts. Looking forward to everyone’s feedback and advice.

[Jayra]

Hi,

I was both interested and intrigued while reading CITE’s Equitable Pedagogy. What stands out to me is the difference in this approach from last year. I remember when I shared my artifact last year one of the questions and feedback I was given was, “How can you make this equitable?” and although I had some differentiation, Honestly equity was not the design mindset I had when I created my artifact. I really enjoyed the creating equitable mindsets section and I think that my next steps are to be more mindful and aware of creating opportunities for equity when it comes to CS4ALL and the work we do with technology.

[Stacy Katz]

The CITE Document on Equitable Pedagogy is really powerful and thought-provoking. I see a lot of overlap with information literacy frameworks around authority being contextual in terms of honoring other forms of learning. My work in Open Education is very much centered around access and learner-centered processes. I was so glad to see that this was also presented in Manifold, which we are lucky to have access to at CUNY and can be used as a platform for open resources that teacher candidates can publish on.

We have conversations similar to the frame around technology in open education, particularly when we ask students to publish their work openly. Catherine Cronin wrote that open “is always complex, personal, contextual, and continually negotiated.” I am thinking about how to integrate the CITE version of “ about, with, through, and against technology” with the open ideas. I think there’s some space for the idea of context and continually negotiated that also could be integrated in the CITE framework. 

There’s a lot of technology in open since it’s one of the things that greatly facilitates the sharing of open resources. I’ve worked with faculty and written about renewable assignments and think there might be places to integrate the CITE framework within this work.

[Alison Lehner-Quam (she/her/hers)]

I appreciate how equity is framed in CITE and am impressed with the group process in which faculty members engaged over the year to create the Equitable CITE Pedagogy document. I had a similar experience with Yasmin about the references and citations. Impressive–happy to see some familiar references and I also documented those that were new to me.

I am enjoying seeing consistent references to concepts, values, and processes throughout the modules. This circling through these ideas really helps to deepen understanding. Initially I considered Liberatory Design as something that students would undertake as they developed technological projects together, and now I see it as something valuable as faculty collaborate together, working to integrate computing in teacher education. This resonated in the CS4All executive summary with the finding that computing was more easily integrated in elementary schools due to the way that subjects are approached in early childhood and childhood education. This was a similar issue when I worked for an art education organization–most of the schools that we collaborated with were elementary schools. I wonder how, as a faculty, we can work together to integrate and support Computer Integrated Teacher Education across ECCE, CLLSE, and MHSE. The report mentioned the value of having a large number of teachers from a single school participate. I imagine at the teacher education level the more who participate, the more the work can be integrated across courses and programs.

When I think of the faculty spotlights that I reviewed, I notice connections with the ideas shared in the Equitable CITE Pedagogy document. Some of the work engaged “learners’ digital lives including by collecting and analyzing data about learners and communities.” An example of this would be the student documentation of their own use of digital media throughout the day.  The Liberatory Mindset “Recognize Oppression” was addressed in a number of projects, including having students consider cultural appropriation in Tik Tok dance videos.

One way I am interested in addressing inequity is by including more of the resources listed in the Equitable CITE Pedagogy in the Lehman Library. I developed a list of titles from the document that would be great to add to the Lehman Library. If you find titles that you feel we should have in the library, let me know and we can work toward including them. There were also a number of Open Access reports which would be great to also make easily available through OneSearch so that students can also have access to them.

I also want to address it more through the teaching that I do–and to find ways to connect more to student’s lived experiences in the library sessions. I am interested in experiencing and seeing more joy in the students’ learning–supporting and finding ways to “make personal and social connections, and overcome challenges in the learning process.”

As I challenge to myself, I want to revisit the Equitable CITE Pedagogy document as I develop an artifact–as I way to stretch the work that I do out of the comfortable and familiar.

[Nancy Dubetz (she/her/ela)]

What are some noticings / wonderings you have about how we’ve framed equity in CITE? Any feedback for us?

I like the approach that CITE has taken. The goals, equitable mindsets and design principles all seem well aligned and making up a wholistic construct, defining what equity means in the CITE context (and I particularly liked that it is NOT about focusing on the technology as the core driving force of the work, though I did add some new resources to my repertoire, specifically the example of how to approach microagressions, the DataBytes resources with questions to unpack different types of data, and the Digital Civics Toolkit.

Where do you see connections between the spotlights you read last week and the ideas shared about equity in this week’s resources?

The connection between Dr. Espinosa’s use of data to illustrate changes over time in publication of children’s literature by people of color is I think a great example of one of the design principles—mobilizing digital tools for social action. The opportunities her students have to critically analyze how language and racial/cultural identify play a role in which books get published and in what languages offers a clear example for me. I also reviewed a second spotlight on the use of Scratch and can see the possibilities here for creativity (which was linked in the essay to problem solving and learning). Also dug into some examples in the CS4All report as well from the NYCDOE of practices.

What are some of the inequities that you are interested in tackling as you design and roll out CITE artifacts?

For me, there are a couple of points made in the essay that speak to what I  might want to tackle. One is the potential bias embedded in existing digital tools for AI like Chat GBT, Google Bard, and Microsoft’s Bing. I want my students to develop a critical lens and assume ownership over data that these provide, to consider both the benefits and risks inherent in using these tools for educational purposes.

.After reading this, where do you think you might challenge yourself to go next?

Not sure I have a specific plan, but I am much more invested in this CITE work now that I see how it is equity focused, and has defined some mind sets and design principles that I hope to incorporate into my project.  Perhaps , through collecting and analyzing data about learners and communities and ensuring data sources are holistic and highlight the assets as well as challenges facing those populations.”  Like other work we’ve done so far, I have pulled a few lists (mind sets, design principles) to construct my own outline of the project assignment so that I keep in mind all that I want to consider as I plan. There is just such an overwhelming amount of information, that I fee the need to capture some important points I don’t want to forget.

[Andrea Zakin (she/her)]

When my daughter started school, I became aware of assistive technologies that help learners with learning differences, which made me think that technology could be a way to level the playing field in education. I’ve observed assistive technologies help students organize their thoughts, integrate visual, speech and auditory processing, provide immediate feedback and support expressive language. I’ve also seen ‘neuro-typical’ students envy those students who use these technologies. I only hope that assistive technologies have developed since then to be used in more creative and open-ended ways, not just render education-as-usual more accessible.

 

I’m beginning to understand how CITE pedagogy frames computing as a liberatory tool that can free teachers and learners to rise above the regimentation of school by transforming the process of learning. I hope to learn about new technologies alongside my students, shifting the typical, hierarchical relationship of teacher and student to create a democratic space to brainstorm, take risks, tinker, and examine new approaches; so rarely the norm in schools today. I knew that CITE was about “ideas” and not just mechanics, but didn’t fully appreciate how technology can empower and enhance the educational experience by placing equity and social justice at its core. I now see that this is a role that the CITE approach to computing can play. The collaborative process and depth and expansive nature of CITE pedagogy is truly impressive to me.

 

I recognize how naturally computing and equity enhance each other, and am drawn to the collaborative, supportive, creative aspect of equitable CITE pedagogy. This approach can revolutionize schools by making learning a co-construction of knowledge and a space of genuine investigation. It has the potential to transform education towards equity and social justice, and greatly appreciate that creativity is at the fore of this work. The two faculty artifacts I examined destabilized usual conceptions of literacy, scaffolding students to deeply engage in this process. I plan to closely examine the goals of my project-based courses and carefully chart the outcomes of what I hope to achieve.

 

I wish STEM was more often STEAM…

[Rabab Abi-Hanna (she/her/hers)]

As I read the Equitable Cite pedagogy, I kept thinking about the importance of language.  Although I was not surprised by different interpretations of equity, seeing them on paper solidified the reality that we all define them according to our background and experiences (isn’t that what we try to promote with our candidates, appreciation for the diverse backgrounds and knowledge Pk-12 students bring to the classroom?).

The goal of  promoting “joyful, meaningful learning” stood out to me. It is very rare to see “joy” and learning coupled together, reinforcing this notion that learning can be joyful and meaningful is extremely important.

I see many connections between the faculty spotlights I reviewed and concepts in the Equitable CITE pedagogy. In one of the spotlights, faculty used data to analyze and compare the different schools. One cannot help but to notice the inequities that exist and recognize how these may contribute to oppression. Dr. Sunyata Smith’s work with mindfulness gives a glimpse into a learner-centered environment. These spotlights worked to empower learners/communities in their own way. When I think of an environment that is conducive to productive learning I think of students (of all ages) being engaged in and aware of  what they are learning, invested in digging deeper for the sake of knowledge.

Unfortunately school mathematics has been reduced to procedures with no connections to context or content. I see too many teacher candidates in schools that are centering state exams and drills of skills. This is unfair to the student and unfair to the teacher. I’m interested in creating an artifact centered around the use of technology as a learning tool to explore and deepen understanding of math concepts. It would be nice to revive the curiosity in students that leads them to want to learn more.

I think the challenge for me will be to get candidates to open up about their thoughts and use of technology in the classroom as a tool for learning.

[Iain M. Coggins]

What was recurring for me in reading through these documents and links is the notion of wholeness, that is the holistic understanding of the education process as much of equity work. I am encouraged to see a holist understanding re-emerging in education through the lens of equity. As an educator, I am motivated by the broadening of equity awareness in my field, but I am motivated by the need to deepen it; that is to see equity not as an isolated objective, but as an outcome of inner change in the lives of teachers and learners learning together.

At first take, it may not seem like I am saying anything new here, but in my experience it is only recently that I have noticed this deepening occurring in the language of equity work. Inner change in the individual as the catalyst for external change in communities, organizations and systems seems to be a key component of the CITE equity framework, as well as Liberatory Design thinking and related initiatives. As far as how such holistic inner change for outer change concerns CS, I am interested in the broader understanding of how to teach in the most human way. In this sense, whether teaching computer science, English Language Arts or Math, the goal is the same: How can each student benefit by developing the agency and capability of directing their own path as a learner?

As a proponent of soka, or value-creative education, a Japanese reformist education philosophy, I see numerous points of connection and resonance with equity education. After reviewing these materials, I am probably most motivated to explore Liberatory Design which seems particularly correlative with soka. Altogether, my interest is bridging any gaps between social emotional and equity learning, since I don’t believe you can have the one without the other.

[Dr. Atasi Das (She/her/hers)]

As I read through this framework, I deeply appreciate the nuanced levels, methods, and histories connected to notions of equity. What I am sitting with is the following quote as it relates to an artifact I would like to tinker with.

“We were captivated and inspired by these social justice approaches because they have the potential to spark the kind of systemic change needed to sustain learners and their communities in all of their diversity, and wanted to make sure our work would live alongside and support those purposes. At the same time as we embraced those ideas, we also acknowledged CITE isn’t explicitly a social justice movement – it’s an educational initiative, embedded in a large, state-and city-funded institution.”

As I have been learning from and with students in our program, I think about the various experiences, ideologies, and assumptions students and educators carry, develop, and are open to transforming.

What do I feel is important to underscore in designing a CITE artifact? I want to develop a space/practice where learners acknowledge current “things” (ie. curriculum, mandates, ideas, ways they’ve done school/learning) as processes with history and from particular interests (that might not be serving them or their communities). This seems to align with developing critical consciousness and also explore the idea of educators as cultural workers (with digital tech a vehicle of shaping a particular form of culture).

 

[Ellie Williamson (she/her/hers)]

I appreciate the work that CITE did and commitment defining equity. I think that the collaboration, considering the input of various stakeholders in this work models equity. I agree that the work is not a one and done deal and it must be revisited as we learn more and as needs change. Technology can help students excel, create classrooms where students learn at their own pace, create their own scaffolds, choose what they want to learn, how they learn, and how to showcase their learning. On the other hand I am cautious and often think about the potential harm it can bring to students from marginalized communities. I think our collaborative work in this setting will help to eliminate the harm while maximizing the empowerment of our students.

A connection I see between this module and the previous is in Dr. Saint- Hilaire’s modeling a student-centered teaching approach allowing for students to explore and engage in their cultural identities through culturally relevant and sustaining computing. Furthermore, Dr. Moreno’s critical reflective activity through padlet empowers students as they engage with and are critical about misinformation.

An inequality that I am interested in tackling as I design and roll out CITE artifacts is being critical of information published on the internet. I want my students to be empowered with tools to discern the sources of information.

Where do you think you might challenge yourself to go next?

I am thinking that I need to write down my course learning targets and my goals for my CITE projects. Look for how they align and how they might not align.

[Joi Jones (she/her)]

As I read the prompt and go through the module several things come to mind. I wonder about the language or “equity” and how the verbiage may be inaccessible to the people it’s meant to support.

I am grateful that there are working groups seeking to demystify equity. I appreciate that access is highlighted as an important component of equity. At Lehman, we worked with students in our. edTPA lab to alleviate any barriers students had to technology and tech support via our edTPA lab. Our lab was successful in bridging the gap of technology and resources for our students with the onset of the edTPA. As more apps are available via laptops and even phones the importance of the CITE project becomes clearer. Our students and even ourselves can be impaired via a lack of knowledge.

The connection I see between the spotlights and this model are bridging the gaps between learners and critical thinkers. A major component of a college education is teaching students to seek and be relentless in their pursuit of resources.

I am interested in bridging the gap between the knowledge base (resources) and the students who need them.

I am not exactly sure yet where this path is leading me but I am interested in learning more about digital literacy and how it can impact connection to support and the resources available to them.