Podcast appearances and mentions of Yasmin B Kafai

Although computing technologies are now ubiquitous in much of the West and other parts of the world, there are still significant inequalities when it comes to who has access to computer science education. Powerful cultural stereotypes about who is or can become a coder persist, leading to the underrepresentation of girls and children of colour from a crucial form of digital literacy. In this episode, Dr. Sara Grimes (Director of the KMDI) chats with Dr. Deborah Fields, Associate Research Professor in the Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Department at Utah State University, about her research on the relationship between identity, motivation and learning how to code among tweens and teens, and how to break down stereotypes about who can code and how. The discussion is focused on Dr. Fields's recent article in the British Journal of Educational Technology: “Debugging by design: A constructionist approach to high school students' crafting and coding of electronic textiles as failure artefacts,” co-authored with Dr. Yasmin B. Kafai, Luis Morales-Novarro, and Justice T. Walker (2021). Type of research discussed in today's episode: education research; pedagogy design and innovation; workshops; computer science education; participatory research; action research.Keywords for today's episode: constructionism; software bug; computer coding; e(lectronic)-textiles; equity in education; STEM (science technology engineering math); mischievousness; socially meaningful failure artifacts; productive failure; creativity; aesthetics first.For more information and a full transcript of each episode, check out our website: http://kmdi.utoronto.ca/the-critical-technology-podcast/Send questions or comments to: criticaltechpod.kmdi@utoronto.ca

Although the push to persuade everyone to learn to code is quite the current rage, the coding movement has roots that extend back for more than a few decades. In 1980 Seymour Papert published his book, Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas, arguing that learning to code would help children to better understand not only educational subject matter, but how to think. This book influenced the push in the early 1980s to place coding in schools. This early “learn to code” movement, though revolutionary, was unsustainable for many reasons. In the new book Connected Code: Why Children Need to Learn Programming (MIT, 2014), Yasmin B. Kafai, Professor of Learning Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, and Quinn Burke, Assistant Professor in the Department of Teacher Education at the College of Charleston, reexamine this early movement and the necessity of reintegrating coding into the K-12 curriculum. Kafai and Burke, too, view coding education as essential in assisting children in understanding how to think about different subjects. But the authors do not simply theorize coding as helping with computational thinking. Kafai and Burke assert that learning how to code is productive for computational participation. That is, programming helps learners not only with thinking, but also with communicating and making social connections. Computational participation, therefore, has ramifications that go beyond the schoolhouse. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Although the push to persuade everyone to learn to code is quite the current rage, the coding movement has roots that extend back for more than a few decades. In 1980 Seymour Papert published his book, Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas, arguing that learning to code would help children to better understand not only educational subject matter, but how to think. This book influenced the push in the early 1980s to place coding in schools. This early “learn to code” movement, though revolutionary, was unsustainable for many reasons. In the new book Connected Code: Why Children Need to Learn Programming (MIT, 2014), Yasmin B. Kafai, Professor of Learning Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, and Quinn Burke, Assistant Professor in the Department of Teacher Education at the College of Charleston, reexamine this early movement and the necessity of reintegrating coding into the K-12 curriculum. Kafai and Burke, too, view coding education as essential in assisting children in understanding how to think about different subjects. But the authors do not simply theorize coding as helping with computational thinking. Kafai and Burke assert that learning how to code is productive for computational participation. That is, programming helps learners not only with thinking, but also with communicating and making social connections. Computational participation, therefore, has ramifications that go beyond the schoolhouse. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Although the push to persuade everyone to learn to code is quite the current rage, the coding movement has roots that extend back for more than a few decades. In 1980 Seymour Papert published his book, Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas, arguing that learning to code would help children to better understand not only educational subject matter, but how to think. This book influenced the push in the early 1980s to place coding in schools. This early “learn to code” movement, though revolutionary, was unsustainable for many reasons. In the new book Connected Code: Why Children Need to Learn Programming (MIT, 2014), Yasmin B. Kafai, Professor of Learning Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, and Quinn Burke, Assistant Professor in the Department of Teacher Education at the College of Charleston, reexamine this early movement and the necessity of reintegrating coding into the K-12 curriculum. Kafai and Burke, too, view coding education as essential in assisting children in understanding how to think about different subjects. But the authors do not simply theorize coding as helping with computational thinking. Kafai and Burke assert that learning how to code is productive for computational participation. That is, programming helps learners not only with thinking, but also with communicating and making social connections. Computational participation, therefore, has ramifications that go beyond the schoolhouse. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices