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?

[Jacqueline Darvin (she/her)]

For me, the most intriguing aspects of the materials I read for this module were the Design Principles and Moves, Selected Teaching Practices / “Moves”. These “moves” strive at operationalizing many of the more theoretical aspects of the documents I reviewed. Once place that I would like to challenge myself to go next is related to supporting learner agency to tinker with, modify, and create tools. I believe this is missing from my currect instruction and s an important design principle. Further, I intend to engage in more vetting and critiquing of tools, tech, and tech cultures. There are many connections between these design principles and moves and the spotlights that I looked at in previous modules. Two “moves” that particularly responate with me are:

• Ask teacher candidates to interpret graphs / charts / data that shed light on some aspect of an injustice or an issue related to your course, and then to interrogate and think critically about data sources.
• Ask teacher candidates to collect and visualize data about a particular issue related to educational inequity or issues their learners face, and develop presentations to real audiences to advocate and make recommendations

These moves fit nicely with work that my in service teachers do in SEYSL 752, a course desiged for literacy coaches, in which teachers work with school data to inform professional development opportunities that a literacy coach/instructional coach might provide to teachers in their schools, based on challenges they notice in school data. I have not yet used school data analysis to explicitly look at aspects of an injustice or inequity, and I believe doing so will help my teachers better understand why data analysis is so important and the various ways in which it can be used to improve not only test scores, but other aspects of curriculum, school culture, etc. that are rarely addressed in teacher education classes via explicit, targeted activities such as these!

[Grace Pai (she/her)]

Phew! There was a lot in that Manifold reading (which by the way, I think could be easier to navigate and digest if there was an outline or table of contents up top with internal hyperlinks). I found myself nodding emphatically through the entire reading. I really appreciated the depth to which the working group went in reviewing literature from all angles on equitable CITE pedagogy, for example in considering intersectionality, or considering multiple perspectives (e.g. for joy and against joy). I thought back to my values and the need to define equity for myself in this context. Considering the current disparities in CT outcomes for students, my focus is on designing experiences that create growth or development for every learner towards equal learning outcomes. The institutional and societal transformation I would most like to see by the next generation is broader representation for BIPOC and women in tech, assuming that tech remains one of the key sectors of social mobility in the future and will not be displaced by AI. Moreover, especially from my experience working with IT students at a community college, I increasingly see a two-track IT field too, where the students of color go into hardware and support desk help, or simpler certification routes that often lead to dead ends. I am personally more interested in the cognitive perspective behind developing computational thinking from the early years so more children can ultimately enter the higher echelons of IT should they choose. This has been at the forefront of my mind the last few modules as I continue to think about what artifact I’d like to design later this summer.

I was most inspired though by reading the last section on design principles. Specifically, I was most drawn to thinking more about how to support learner agency to tinker with, modify and create tools, as well as how to center creativity and expression. Both of these are such important principles that are transferable to anything that a child does, even if they are not interested in tech per se.

For my artifact, I had been thus far thinking about how to incorporate CT into a content unit in my math methods course (e.g. into a unit on teaching geometry or base ten operations), but reading about tinkering and creativity reminded me of the 8 mathematical practices that are part of the Next Gen math standards. For example, the first practice is about persevering in math problem solving. This is where I am going to challenge myself to continue my thinking – perhaps creating a CITE artifact that aligns to mathematical practices instead of a content standard. If you can’t tell, I’m already having such design indecision about creating my artifact!

[Sara Vogel, PhD. (she/her)]

Thanks so much, Grace, for your reflections! I’m taking a lot from your comments.

For future reference, there’s a table of contents link at the top of the manifold page. You’re right that “back to top” links would help some… I’ll see what I can do!

[Kate Menken (She/Her)]

Hi Everyone! Please forgive any typos, as I’m working on my iPad today. My students use many different devices, with many solely or mostly on tablets, so I like to get off my computer sometimes to experience the interface as they do.
First, the inequities unearthed in the CS4All executive summary should not have surprised me, yet did anyway (although they overlooked bilingual students – what’s up with that?!). But from my vantage point as a parent, community member, and faculty member, the pandemic forced the NYCDOE (& CUNY) to further enter the digital age – imperfectly, but far more so than in the past, which I think is promising/exciting, including in communities where this really wasn’t being done previously. Yet all the new use wasn’t really acknowledged in the report. That said, I can see how this period was more about students as *users* of technology rather than builders or creators, and how access to CS learning might have gone out the window in many places in response to the pandemic, and that the more racially integrated and wealthier schools would have gotten greater access (as they do, which needs to always be named).
All this makes me wonder, to what extent is use alone a component of CS learning? It doesn’t seem to be a key part of the summer CITE training, which I appreciate.

I love that the CITE team has done a deeper dive into this important topic, by analyzing the work of faculty last summer in the name of equity. I really appreciate how equity seems to be a major focus in the CITE work, and the vision of Equitable CITE document (longer manifold version). Since CITE is new to me, I found the interactive version really helpful and a bit easier to begin to think through. I liked the vision and stance, but concrete examples help me think about how this can look. So for instance, this was accessible because it’s something I already do with my students, albeit not through a CITE lens:

• “Ask teacher candidates to interpret graphs / charts / data that shed light on some aspect of an injustice or an issue related to your course, and then to interrogate and think critically about data sources.”

So reading this after the faculty efforts we dug into in the past two modules, I can think about new applications of our summer CITE work and its equity principles in my teaching. That seems like an accessible starting point.

I came into this summer thinking about AI and partícularly chatGPT in student writing by both our QC students as well as by K-12 students. Since AI is my camp selection too I might stick with that – particularly for a writing intensive course that I teach. I’m not sure what the equity component is, though I have read that as these technologies develop it’s important that members of marginalized communities are involved in their development by entering prompts that address their interests and concerns. I also wonder whose language practices AI has been normed on – is it normed on so called “standard English” or “academic language” as narrowly defined. And if so, we then have think critically about who benefits and whose interests are centered.

I realize this May have been an unintended outcome, but our summer CITE work has also been pushing me to incorporate flip grid into my course assignments more. In my fall course, I’d really like to swap out one of the reading responses with a flip grid video response instead. I have invited students to do this as a choice in the past, but most choose to write their responses. This makes me wonder why – I’d like to better understand if this is because they think writing is expected, because they have more experience writing than talking about academic ideas, because they aren’t experienced yet with video apps like flip grid, or because it raises different concerns, e.g., around the staging of those videos, saying everything they want in just two min, around their own language practices, etc. But I also think about the many ways we privilege “academic language” practices, and the research such as in raciolinguistics exposing the racism within this privileging, so from an equity standpoint a video where students are invited to engage their own language practices (including their entire linguistic repertoire) to talk about course readings could be good.

[Kate Menken (She/Her)]

Ugh sorry – I wish I could edit my post but too late now. First the exec summary touches on bilingual students but not much so should have said it “largely overlooks bilingual students.” And, I meant to say that use DOES seem to be a key part of summer CITE training, which I appreciate….

[Michael Perrone (he/him/his)]

There was so much to unpack in the modules and I, at times, found myself somewhat overwhelmed by the sheer depth of the material.  I found that viewing the notion of equity through the lens of AI to be a truly profound and enriching experience for me.  It is interesting–in the vast majority of courses which I instruct, I do focus on the concept of equity–centering this upon the idea of the provision of diverse and multiple opportunities for all learners.  ( The students often conflate this notion with equality).  However, through this module, I have begun to think about how to move our learners beyond being users of technology and to engage them in being creators and modifiers of technology.   As an educator, this is a gap or limitation in my current pedagogy practices.  I have my learners engage in the use of tech-focused platforms frequently.  For example, I have replaced several of the short written submissions with Flipgrid submissions.  However, I do feel that I need to expand the learning options and tools—I have to foster a greater sense of student agency concerning such tasks.  For example, having the students themselves select and use/modify their own platform rather than being told which one to use.  For my project, I will  be looking at the incorporation of AI in the early childhood classroom.  I am really excited about having this opportunity.  At times, we tend to hear broadstroked comments concerning the limitations of AI, particularly in the early childhood classroom.  As such, to be able to address some of these misconceptions would be a critical step.  In the article, I found the section about design principles to be particularly important and I look forward to incorporating these concepts in my work ahead.