Kimberly A. Scott

COMPUGIRLS’ Standpoint Culturally Responsive Computing and Its Effect on Girls of Color

This article investigates the motivations of African American and Latino girls (N = 41) who navigate urban Southwest school districts during the day, but voluntarily attend a 2-year, culturally responsive multimedia program after school and into the summer. Understanding that girls from economically disadvantaged settings are indeed motivated to become technological innovators but often do not have access to the necessary resources to follow their interest, our program—entitled COMPUGIRLS—assumes a culturally responsive computing approach. This research examines particular features of the program (e.g., asset building, reflections, and connectedness) that attracted and retained the Latina (74%) and African American (19%) adolescent (ages 13-18) participants as well as to what extent the culturally relevant aspects of the curriculum assist with program retention and/or affect the students’ vision of themselves as a future technologist. An evaluative approach gathered 2 years of data from the participants. Field notes from observations and interviews were transcribed and reviewed to extract themes and areas of convergence. As a standpoint theory project, the authors center the girls’ voices as the primary data sources. Two primary themes emerged from the data to explain girls’ sustained motivation. The first was the challenge of learning and mastering the technology. For many, this also included disproving the stereotypes of their abilities by age, gender, and race. The second theme was being able to manipulate technology and learning experiences as a means of self-expression and research, particularly if the results could be used to inform their community and peers. The authors posit that much of the program impact was because of the culturally responsive practices (asset building, reflection, and connectedness) embedded within the curriculum. Implications for urban educators and program developers are considered.

Culturally responsive computing: a theory revisited

Despite multiple efforts and considerable funding, historically marginalized groups (e.g., racial minorities and women) continue not to enter or persist in the most lucrative of fields – technology. Understanding the potency of culturally responsive teaching (CRT), some technology-enrichment programs modified CRP principles to establish a culturally responsive computing (CRC) experience for disenfranchised groups. We draw from our respective praxes developing two such initiatives and reconceptualize CRC as a heuristic. In this theoretical article, we offer a more nuanced vision of CRC considering intersectionality, innovations, and technosocial activism. Implications for the newly defined tenets consider programmatic, theoretical, and methodological concerns.

Critical Thoughts: Reexamining Teacher Training, Cultural Awareness, and School Reform.

President Bush’s education act—No Child Left Behind (NCLB)—promises to close the achievement gap created by race, social class, disabilities, and English proficiency (Hunter & Bartee, 2003; Lewis, 2003). Importantly, this national reform effort comes at a time when population projections estimate that more students of color than White students will be attending America’s public schools by 2050 (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1996) and that the United States has one of the highest child poverty rates of all the industrialized nations (UNICEF, Innocenti Research Center, 2005). As a result, this initiative casts teachers and schools more accountable for narrowing the educational chasms at a time when more students, who tend to fall behind, are entering the plagued system (Rios et al., 2003). For teacher education programs, this phenomenon produces two considerations: (1) Programs are beginning to reconsider their pedagogical practices, recognizing that the prospective teachers’ aptitude will be measured by their own students’ standardized test scores; and (2) In light of this realization, encouraging teachers to work in districts that have failed but are expected to now succeed—namely low-income districts disproportionately populated by children of color— requires a different type of cultural diversity training. Of course, these two elements are intertwined. Some scholars have argued that students achieve at higher rates when their teachers are culturally sensitive, utilize culturally relevant pedagogy, and can create a genuinely empathetic relationship with youngsters who are culturally different (Gay, 2000; Howard, 2001; LadsonBillings, 1994). If we know this to be true, then why does the federally mandated NCLB not mention increasing teachers’ cultural awareness? Without government inter-

Digital Engagement for Urban Youth: From Theory to Practice

No matter how well couched, cultural deficit discourse remains prevalent particularly within discussions of urban youth and digital media. Without research-based examples indicating the effectiveness of culturally responsive computing practices, attempts to include more urban youth in the technological pipeline will remain limited. Our special edition challenges this troubling possibility and focuses on three questions:

My Students Think I'm Indian: The presentation of an African-American self to pre-service teachers

How individuals perceive their selves is not necessarily congruent with how society perceives the individual. Race, class, gender and sexual orientation typically affect the perceptions and the expectations of the viewing audience as well as the performance of the observed individuals. This article examines one of these sociocultural features--race--to explore its effects on the inter- and intraracial associations between teacher educators of color and their students. It draws on the authors experience as an African-American female teaching in a predominantly White undergraduate teacher education program in the USA. An analysis of how race affects the interactions takes advantage of critical race theory, along with Goffmans theory of self-presentation. This article points to the effects of raced associations on Whiteness and Blackness in the contexts of a teacher education classroom and institution. The implications for teacher education programs diversifying their faculty are addressed.

Lessons learned: research within an urban, African American district

For an African American female researcher whose race, class, and gender work as oppressive intersecting units shaping my contextualized experiences, meaning‐making, and self‐definition, the implications of my work with African American communities are complicated. In this article, I draw on culturally sensitive research practices, critical race theory, and Black feminist theory to deconstruct how race–gender–social class informed my own field experience. To these ends, I hope to advance the theoretical discussion of qualitative research with urban African American communities beyond abstraction to serious implications for practice and policy.

I Compagni: Understanding Children's Transition from Preschool to Elementary School

If Schleef’s description of “Graham’s” law and business school students is generalizable to similar graduate schools, what we are witnessing looks like the encirclement of the “professions” by Weber’s iron cage. Stripped bare of ideals and a connection to the common good, the modern business school and law school student has become a prisoner of her own achievement and achievement-driven approach to life choices. Their inner voices are barely audible. While an MBA or law degree may be a safe and well-trodden road to an upper-middle-class lifestyle, it offers no guideposts for addressing students’ non-material, existential concerns. It is a path to a highly individualistic life, without connection with or duties toward society, and intensely pre-occupied with material concerns. It has no connection to what Weber called Beruf, or calling. The individual driven by a passion for the law or a passion for creating something new in the economy is not likely to be found in the elite law or business school. What one finds instead are what Weber called “Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart.” My major quibble with the book is Schleef’s loose use of the term “profession” when applied to business school. Management is not a profession. It lacks, in both the functional account and Abbot’s description of professions as a system, many of the major characteristics of a profession, such as an agreed upon body of knowledge and a recognized claim over a certain set of problems. As a result, Schleef minimizes some important differences in the cognitive aspects of training in law school versus business school. That said, this book should appeal to those seeking to understand the sociological character of the students attending the nation’s elite law and business schools. I Compagni: Understanding Children’s Transition from Preschool to Elementary School, by William A. Corsaro and Luisa Molinari. New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 2005. 196 pp.

The big men in blue: custodians in three American schools

64.00 cloth. ISBN: 0807746193.

You Want To Be a Girl and Not My Friend: African-American/Black Girls' Play Activities with and without Boys.

Although ubiquitous members of schools, few scholars and/or practitioners recognize how custodians’/caretakers’ associations with students reciprocally contribute to student welfare and custodian status. This ethnographic study documents custodians’ lived experiences while interacting with young children in three socioeconomically different American school settings. The findings suggest that custodians’ contextualized behaviors affect their associations and self-perceptions as professionals. Race and gender complicate this process. Recommendations for how scholars, practitioners, and policy makers can capitalize on custodians’ ubiquitous roles and their contextualized self-understanding are provided for consideration.