4 Understanding Equity in Computer Science and Computer Science Education

Chapter Overview

This chapter unpacks what we mean by the term “equity” broadly and within the contexts of computer science (CS) and CS education (CS Ed) specifically. Given that equity is the central focus of this guide, it is important to understand what we mean by the term. However, in many contexts, equity is not well defined. This chapter explores how different definitions of equity are connected to the inequities that CS educators want to work to address. The chapter also considers how working toward equity in CS Ed may require multiple ways of thinking about equity.

Chapter Objectives

After reading this chapter, I can:

• Explain the relationship between inequity and equity.
• Define equity as it applies to CS and CS Ed in different ways.
• Recognize the advantages and limitations of different definitions of equity in relation to CS and CS Ed.

Key Terms:

assimilation; broadening participation; equality; equity as access; equity as transformation; ethnocomputing; generative computing; inequity; intersectionality; language agnostic; marginalized/minoritized identities; social justice; underrepresentation

Ms. Morales’ Story

As shared in Chapter 3, K-8 public school teacher Ms. Morales and her colleagues attended professional development (PD) sessions where they learned about many of the inequities embedded in CS fields and CS Ed. After these PD sessions, the teachers clearly recognized how inequities were shaping their work as educators and their students’ experiences in CS Ed. Less clear to them, however, was what exactly “equity” meant. The term was clearly being set up as a counterpoint to inequity, but it still seemed like a buzzword. As they reflected together, they hoped to better understand both equity in general and how specific definitions of equity could shape their work as CS educators.

The Relationship Between Equity and Inequity

Ms. Morales and her colleagues’ efforts to understand equity demonstrates an important point: equity is not an easy word to define or unpack. It gets used by policy makers in the media, by educators in schools, and by people in society generally. It can be defined in many ways, but people are often not clear about how they are using it and may not share the same definition. People may use “equity” interchangeably with “equality” (giving everyone the same thing) or as an empty buzzword, like Ms. Morales and her colleagues noticed. Although it can be hard to define, how we think about equity matters, because our definitions of the term guide how we understand policies and programs and the actions we take to work toward more equitable outcomes in CS and CS Ed.

People’s approaches to equity often grow out of how they think about inequity. When we identify inequities, we point to problems that we think we need to solve. Then, we define equity in ways that work toward solutions to those problems. For example, one problem that has been identified in CS is that people with marginalized identities (e.g., racially and gender minoritized individuals, people with disabilities) are underrepresented in the computing workforce. When the field frames the limited presence of marginalized people in the workforce as a problem of underrepresentation, they often define equity as broadening participation. Working toward equity as broadening participation looks like creating opportunities for marginalized people to participate in CS and CS Ed. Those focused on working toward equity in this way might measure the success of their efforts based on the diversity of students taking CS Ed courses or on the number of employees in the CS industry who hold marginalized identities.

While these efforts help address the problem of underrepresentation, they don’t necessarily consider whether those who hold marginalized identities feel welcome in CS and CS Ed spaces. Similarly, a broadening participation approach to equity might not examine whether the products that workers design and program are having just and ethical impacts. These are different inequities that generate different understandings of equity and lead us to take different actions. Most approaches to equity are limited in some way, which means it is often helpful to draw on different perspectives of equity at different times for different purposes, or even to use multiple understandings of equity together (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine [NASEM], 2022). Taking a multifaceted approach can enable us to work toward equity in different ways and address different levels of inequity in tandem.

Exploring Definitions of Equity

As Chapter 3 showed, there are many inequities that society and our students face related to computing and CS Ed. This means that defining equity to address those problems is complex. Exploring this complexity, Ms. Morales and her colleagues worked to refine their understanding of equity. They hoped that having a clearer definition would allow them to better respond to the challenges they faced, better support their diverse students, and work toward more equitable outcomes in their classrooms. Ms. Morales’ personal experiences with her students and the topics that her PD community focused on (like disability, language, and race) made her an important voice as she and her colleagues reflected together on what equity means.

The PD community began by looking at a set of images about equity that often circulates around social media (Figure 1). Each of the three images in the series shows three young people of different heights trying to watch a baseball game from behind a tall fence. The first image is meant to show “reality.” It illustrates the tallest person standing on a set of seven boxes. The next tallest person stands on a single box, and the shortest person stands in a pit underground. This image suggests that some individuals disproportionately receive the social resources they need to be successful, but others have to deal with extra disadvantages. The second image represents “equality.” All three people stand on one box each, and the pit is gone. Although they all received the same resources, the shortest person still cannot see over the fence. In the final image, all three people receive the appropriate amount of boxes that they individually need to see over the fence to view the game. This image is meant to show “equity.”

Figure 1
Illustrations of Reality, Equality, and Equity

The “reality” image resonated with Ms. Morales and her colleagues. They agreed that we don’t all start from the same place or with the same resources. Similarly, our students don’t all start with the same experience with or access to CS Ed. The teachers also found the images useful in helping them distinguish between “equity” (the third image) and “equality” (the second image) or giving everyone the same thing (like the same type of education, jobs, money, healthcare).

The image representing equality illustrates that while giving everyone the same thing might seem “fair” on the surface, it only gets us so far in meeting students’ needs. In a classroom based on equality, all students would get an identical computer, compatible with English, but with the “r” keyboard letter key missing. When students needed to type out their names, even though everyone has the same computer, not everyone would be able to accomplish the task. Students who had an “r” in their name, or students whose names were written in other writing systems (like the Arabic alphabet or Chinese characters), or students who needed assistive technologies to type because of disabilities would not be able to use their computers to type their name. Giving everyone the same opportunities and resources doesn’t necessarily result in equal outcomes.

The concept of equity offers an alternative to equality. The National Equity Project defines equity as providing “each child … [with] what they need to develop their full academic and social potential” (National Equity Project, n.d., emphasis added). A key phrase in this definition is “what they need.” In a classroom based on equity, each student would receive a personalized laptop with a keyboard and settings in their desired language and any accessibility tools they needed. This tailored approach would support students to successfully complete the assigned task of typing their name.

The CS teachers in Ms. Morales’ PD community appreciated the distinction between equity and equality. But as they sat with that definition of equity — that it is about providing people with what they need to thrive — more questions surfaced. Ms. Morales shared how she had “a love-hate” relationship with the images:

Recognizing Ms. Morales’ point, many people add a fourth panel to Figure 1. This last image shows all three people watching the game, but the fence has been removed entirely. The removal of the fence symbolizes “social justice,” or the dismantling of oppressive conditions and systems that act as barriers to opportunities and resources.

Ms. Morales and her colleagues agreed that these four images together (see Figure 2) provided a metaphor for giving students what they need and breaking down barriers to access (in this case, access to a baseball game).

Figure 2
Illustrations of Versions of (In)Equity

But the teachers still had questions about different parts of the metaphor and places where the analogy seemed to break down and fall short. Specifically, they asked questions about the three individuals in the picture, the fence, and the game itself:

The thought-provoking questions that Ms. Morales and her colleagues raised show how complex it is to define and understand equity in ways that can lead to potential solutions for the inequities discussed in Chapter 3. Making sense of equity requires understanding and dismantling historical and present-day barriers, being clear about what the purposes of equity work are and who the beneficiaries are, and recognizing those communities’ goals, aspirations, and needs.

Exploring Tensions in Defining Equity

One core question that the teachers considered as they viewed the images above centered around using the game of baseball as a metaphor. They wondered why baseball was drawn as the activity that the individuals in the images were attempting to gain access to. They figured it might have something to do with baseball’s traditional reputation as the “great American pastime.” Applying this to education, the teachers related the baseball game to the kinds of schooling that equity initiatives often seek to provide students access to. Those ways of schooling tend to center the speaking, reading, writing, and computing practices of those with more power in society (e.g., white, English-speaking, middle class, college-educated, male, nondisabled). Yet there are so many ways to be, speak, read, write, and compute. Ms. Morales highlighted this reality:

Inequities like those discussed in Chapter 3 exist because many diverse ways of being are not perceived as legitimate in society’s institutions, including schooling. Teachers wondered what would shift if they changed the game in the picture, centering the interests, cultures, and aspirations of those often considered “on the margins” in their teaching.

As teachers discussed these possibilities, one teacher raised her hand to ask a question: Would teaching students to achieve goals outside the mainstream purposes of schooling mean that students wouldn’t get a chance to learn the knowledge, skills, and programming languages they’d need to pass a test or succeed during a job interview? The group acknowledged that to an extent, they did have a professional responsibility to prepare their students for the world around them. They grappled with the desire to “change the game” (e.g., baseball) to something more relevant to their students and communities and to prepare their students with the knowledge they would need to succeed in the game that was already being played.

These tensions are captured in two common ways of conceptualizing or thinking about equity (see Table 1).

Table 1
Conceptualizing Equity
(see Grapin et al., 2023; Philip & Azevedo, 2017; NASEM, 2022)

Concept	Definition
Equity as access	Focusing on making sure that everyone — including members of marginalized groups — has what they need to participate in and access mainstream STEM and CS disciplines, expertise, and tools as they currently stand. This notion encompasses efforts toward “broadening participation” in the field.
Equity as transformation	Focusing on disrupting the status quo of disciplines, fields, and industries; valuing and centering marginalized knowledge bases, tools, and people.

These conceptions of equity can work together and be complementary, or they might be in opposition. There are also many other ways to think about equity. Along with understandings about access and transformation, the field of CS Ed has developed different frameworks that lay out multiple dimensions of equity in CS Ed. Some of these frameworks are summarized in Table 2. You may find that one or more of these frameworks is useful to help you think about equity in your own context.

Table 2
Some Equity Frameworks in Computer Science Education

Framework	Description
The CAPE Framework[1] (Capacity, Access, Participation, and Experience) (Fletcher & Warner, 2021)	This framework centers students’ experiences as meaningful resources for CS learning while also addressing the need to develop capacity in the systems around students to support their access and participation.
The Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Computer Science Education Framework[2] (Kapor Center; Davis et al., 2021)	This framework provides a shared definition of culturally responsive-sustaining CS Ed and identifies six components to implement culturally responsive-sustaining approaches. The components center anti-racism, sociopolitical critique, student voice and agency, and community and cultural assets as resources for learning.
The Inclusive Teaching Pedagogies Framework[3] (Computer Science Teachers Association; [CSTA], n.d.)	This framework integrates Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and translanguaging as teaching practices that attend to the needs of students with disabilities and multilingual learners in CS. Implementing these pedagogies can create more inclusive CS learning environments.
The Culturally Responsive Computing Framework[4] (Scott et al., 2015)	This framework attends to CS learners’ intersectional identities, culminating in students engaging in activism for more equitable computing and technology.

Regardless of how we frame it, unpacking different notions of equity is important to ensure that our definitions address the problems that we, our students, and our communities care about. In the next sections, we explore what equity as access and equity as transformation mean and consider limitations of these definitions as well.

Equity as Access to Mainstream Ways of Doing CS: Playing the Game

As teachers pointed out during the PD session, there are benefits to being able to achieve success within mainstream systems of schooling. Because certain practices and knowledge are privileged by society, efforts toward equity as access support marginalized students to engage in the practices and learn the knowledge that afford power in society (Delpit, 1988). This is sometimes referred to as helping students learn to “play the game” (Gutiérrez, 2009). In other words, if U.S. educational systems have decided that baseball is the game that should be played, then ensuring that all students have access to the skills and tools they need to play baseball is one way to engage in equity work.

What does it mean to “play the game” in CS Ed? CS benefits from being a subject that is not required or tested in many states. This means that the rules of the CS “game” are still being written. At the same time, there are ways of doing CS that teachers and schools might perceive as “mainstream” or particularly powerful because they support entry into CS careers. These ways of computing are often aligned with expectations of beginning-level CS courses in college (e.g., CS 101) that prioritize using programming languages like Java to code applications that solve decontextualized problems. Over the years, courses like AP Computer Science A have worked to teach students this code. Similarly, efforts like Code.org’s Hour of Code have worked to broaden participation by encouraging students around the country, including those who have been historically marginalized from CS Ed, to get early exposure to programming.^[5] As Ms. Morales pointed out, “Opening the door to CS is the first step, ensuring that it doesn’t lead to another closed door requiring many keys to open. Students should be able to continue to progress with CS skills and have multiple opportunities from elementary school on.”

Early exposure to computing and related efforts can increase the “pipeline” of underrepresented groups who enter CS careers, becoming a first step toward some equity goals. However, this approach may fall short of meeting other equity goals (Perez & Garcia, 2023). Equity as access doesn’t guarantee a sense of relevance, belonging, or power in the CS field for those who enter. Even marginalized learners who work to speak, read, write, and compute in ways that align with mainstream cultural expectations still experience racism, sexism, and linguistic injustice in educational spaces (Flores & Rosa, 2015). Furthermore, broadening participation arguments don’t address the negative environmental, social, and political impacts of computing described in Chapter 3. Those issues prompt us to ask the question: What kind of CS do we want to broaden participation into?

We propose that advancing equity in CS might mean not just providing learners with access to the CS knowledge valued in industry but also transforming and expanding the valued reasons for doing CS and what counts as CS knowledge. We consider below what equity as transformation might encompass.

Equity as Transformation of the Status Quo: Changing the Game

Our students do not code in a vacuum. They are computing in a complex world that often tries to assimilate them, erase them, surveil them, and label them. But they also code and compute in a world that they are actively participating in and find joy in. They may have ideas about how to remake and transform their world, too. We are inspired by scholar Zaretta Hammond, who defines equity as ensuring that all students have the ability to be “powerful learners,” engaged in “deep learning,” who are full of “intellectual curiosity and engagement” (Hammond, as quoted in Rebora, 2021, pp. 14-15).

This way of thinking about equity resonated with Ms. Morales. She wondered:

Equity as transformation pushes us to think beyond giving students access to mainstream ways of computing, to question what lies beyond the status quo, and to consider alternative possibilities. Equity-as-transformation perspectives move us closer to alternatives to playing “baseball.” Instead of merely providing students with access to play the game that society has already established, we can consider what it might look like to “change the game” and transform it into something new (Gutiérrez, 2009).

A first step toward changing the game in CS involves interrogating what the purposes of CS are. Mainstream purposes for CS often seek to reproduce militaristic and industrial ends (Vossoughi & Vakil, 2018; Jones & melo, 2021). A common purpose for CS education is assimilation into the dominant status quo. At best, assimilation ignores, and at worse it violently suppresses, the cultural expertise and experiences, the goals and aspirations, and the language and cultural practices of students with diverse gender, racial and ethnic, and linguistic and cultural identities, as well as students with different abilities (González et al., 2005).

Equity as transformation involves recognizing that there are a range of benefits that learners and their communities want to and already gain from computing. Transformative ways of computing include ethnocomputing, or studying the computational practices that are entwined in minoritized communities’ cultural practices (Eglash et al., 2006; Lachney et al., 2021; New York City Public Schools, n.d.), and generative computing, or connecting computing practices to local community practices in culturally responsive ways (Lachney et al., 2021). Transformative computing also mobilizes traditions and histories from feminist, Black, Latine, Asian, and Indigenous perspectives.^[6] Lewis et al. (2018), for example, employs aspects of Indigenous ways of knowing to unpack artificial intelligence.

In CS Ed, transformation might include mobilizing computing to promote project-based and inquiry models of learning; to innovate and solve local and global problems of interest; to participate in civic life; to promote joy and creativity; and to work toward social justice through critique, organizing, activism, and holding power to account (Vogel et al., 2017). If our schools only define equity as “broadening participation” for industry, they miss these other purposes and rationales for equitable computing that benefit everyone. CS teacher Karime reflected on students’ varied values and interests and how those might drive them to do CS for different purposes:

In some classrooms, teachers are guiding students to reckon with the tensions between dominant ways of developing technology and more “justice-centered” CS approaches. Tarek, a New York City-based CS educator, shared an example of how he did this by asking his students to “design an app to solve a problem in their community.” Tarek explained that “at first, they all focused on things in their own neighborhoods. But when I encouraged them to think about problems faced by other communities, their ideas exploded!” Tarek described some of the apps his students created:

• One group created an app called Parking Superhero to help teachers find parking.^[7] They really understood the challenges teachers face.
• Another group made an app called Confusing Words to help English Language Learners learn new vocabulary.^[8]
• There was a group who noticed all the stress their friends were feeling, so they built Calm It Down to help them manage daily challenges.^[9]

Other educators begin to move toward equity-as-transformation orientations by exploring the contributions of diverse groups and their active efforts to resist the unjust impacts of technology. Some examples of those using technology for social action appear in Table 3. These organizations and others like them actively resist inequity and work to transform computing that supports a more equitable world.

Table 3
Computing to Promote Social Justice

Group Name	Description
Data for Black Lives	This group works to “challenge discriminatory uses of data and algorithms across systems” to resist the ways that Black communities are impacted by embedded biases in technology. Website: https://d4bl.org/
Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.)	This group works to end mass surveillance that discriminates against groups like Muslim Americans, immigrants, Indigenous peoples, communities of color, and the LGBTQIA2S community. Website: https://stopspying.org
WITNESS	This group provides resources to “[help] people use video and technology to protect and defend human rights.” Website: https://witness.org
XFR Collective	This group works to preserve “at-risk audiovisual media — especially unseen, unheard, or marginalized works.” Website: https://linktr.ee/xfrcollective

Inspired by students and the diverse computing practices of people in the world, CS educators have created new kinds of curriculum and opportunities for students who have been traditionally excluded from CS Ed. One core effort has been the creation of culturally relevant and culturally responsive computing curricula that is rooted in theories of culturally relevant and culturally responsive pedagogy and teaching (Gay, 2018; Hammond, 2014; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Madkins et al., 2020; Scott et al., 2015). For example, Margolis and colleagues (2015) shared their popular Exploring Computer Science (ECS) curriculum. This curriculum is meant to introduce students — especially those from underrepresented backgrounds — to CS concepts and practices through the lens of project-based and inquiry-driven units. These approaches benefit all students by centering their voices and perspectives as students use computing to address social issues that they personally care about.

Equity in the Everyday

Thus far, we’ve presented equity as access and equity as transformation as separate and in tension. Yet these ideas are also interrelated and overlapping. Doing equity work in the day-to-day often requires drawing on both notions in tandem.

The AP CS Principles course provides one example of this reality. Historically, high schools with CS courses mostly offered AP Computer Science A to prepare students for beginning-level CS courses in college. These AP courses, however, lost female, Black, and Latine test takers over the years (Apraci-Dusseau et al., 2013). Acknowledging this reality, the College Board and other stakeholders came together to design and introduce the AP CS Principles (AP CSP) course and exam. Instead of focusing on teaching a particular programming language, the new AP CSP exam is language agnostic, focusing on core skills that can be applied across different programming languages. The AP course and exam center big ideas about computing and computational thinking practices.^[10] In AP CSP, students are asked to use computing for real-world problem solving. The course has proven popular and has led to an increase in students taking the AP CSP exam, making modest gains in promoting more diversity among test takers.

While still aiming to provide “access” to college credit and skills needed for success in higher education and industry spaces, the AP CSP revision has had some modest transformational impacts as well. It expanded what “counted” as valuable CS knowledge to include skills beyond programming, like collaboration and creativity. It also engaged students in exploring the impacts of computing technology (Blikstein, 2018, p. 17). Equity-oriented CS teachers may not need permission to incorporate this content into their CS instruction. However, by explicitly including those topics in the AP CSP course design, it is less risky for all teachers to move in those directions.

At the same time, these modest efforts toward transformation are not guaranteed. The same AP CSP course taught by a less equity-oriented teacher could reproduce narratives of computing that support industrial and militaristic ends and fail to adequately meet marginalized learners’ needs and experiences. AP CS teachers will also navigate situations where working toward equity as access and equity as transformation might clash, such as needing to balance time spent discussing issues related to social justice and computing with time spent preparing students for the AP exam. These tensions show how complex equity work can be, how we often need to think about equity in multiple ways at the same time, and how educators play a critical role in working toward equity in all kinds of CS Ed spaces. See Resource 1 at the end of the chapter for another example of how teachers can identify inequities in their classrooms and work to further multiple definitions of equity.

Our Vision of Equity

In defining equity for this guide, we echo academic Scott Grapin and colleagues who argue that efforts should “attend to equity as access while pushing toward equity as transformation” (Grapin et al., 2023, p. 1018). This notion is core to this book’s mission. Thinking of equity in these terms, we hope to work toward a future where:

• learners whose identities have been marginalized in CS and in society have what they need — including access to relevant computing tools and literacies — to learn, to thrive, and to sustain and contribute to the evolution of their communities’ cultural and language practices; and
• all learners are equipped with critical consciousness about computing tools, cultures, and industries so they might work toward transforming those tools, cultures, and industries to become ethical and just.

We emphasize our focus on access to relevant computing that is meaningful for our students — not just access to the kinds of CS that have been mainstreamed. We want our students to thrive by supporting their critical awareness of the sociopolitical games embedded in society, technology fields, and education and empowering them to choose how they want to play. We also want educators and students to practice changing the game.

Scholars Alim, Paris, and Wong (2020) provide us with one more vision of what it would be like to change the game:

What would our pedagogies look like if these hegemonic gazes weren’t the dominant ones? What if, indeed, the goal of teaching and learning with young people of color was not ultimately to see how closely they could perform white middle-class norms, but rather was to explore, honor, extend and, at times, problematize their cultural practices and investments? What would our educational contexts look like in a world where we owed no explanations, to anyone, about the value of our children’s culture, language and learning potential? (p. 262)^[11]

Educators play a key role in their classrooms to enact pedagogies that value and honor students’ cultures and experiences. However, administrators, policy makers, and industry leaders are also responsible for engaging in this transformational work. Collective efforts will change the game not only within individual classrooms but also through more lasting structural and system-wide changes.

Revisiting Ms. Morales’ Story

Ms. Morales is on the path toward that vision in her own CS classroom. She shared an example of one project that she developed as an introduction to CS. Recognizing the cultural and linguistic diversity of her students, Ms. Morales focused on computing tools as a form of self-expression to support social-emotional learning. She wanted students to share their identities: “what makes them unique, special and how we represent ourselves.” Drawing on students’ experiences in their communities (e.g., language, culture, hobbies), her students created projects in Scratch that blended computing with other forms of expression, like poetry, illustrations, and song in multiple languages to share about themselves and make connections to each other and to CS as a resource to support understanding. Ms. Morales described her students’ reactions to this experience:

Ms. Morales’ project used multiple strategies to give all her students access to participating but also worked toward transforming CS from a decontextualized discipline for a few to a powerful way for her students to express themselves in ways that “value[d] … [their] culture, language and learning potential” (Alim et al., 2020, p. 262).

In the chapters that follow, you’ll continue to think about equity in terms of access and transformation and their overlaps. You’ll be invited to reflect on the purposes of CS Ed in your settings and will consider concrete suggestions for pedagogical strategies and approaches that can help you enact changes toward transforming what CS looks like in your classrooms and schools. We also recognize, as we noted earlier, that no single definition of equity is enough (NASEM, 2022). We invite you to consider the inequities you notice around you and develop your own definitions of equity that help you address those inequities in your local contexts and spaces. As you do so, you can become change agents for your colleagues, your students, and the field of CS Ed.

Reflection Questions:

1. Based on what you have read in this chapter, how would you personally define equity? What is your own vision of equity?
2. In your contexts, what efforts are being made to help students “play the game”? To help students “transform the game”?
3. How have you seen tensions related to different equity efforts play out in the settings where you work?

Takeaways for Practice:

• Analyze the computing spaces you work in through the framings of equity we explored in this chapter. Are definitions of equity clearly stated in these spaces? Where and how do you recognize efforts to work toward equity as access? Where and how do you recognize efforts to work toward equity as transformation?
• Identify one small change you can make in your personal CS Ed context that can work toward your definition of equity from Reflection Question 1 above.

Glossary

Term	Definition
assimilation	Processes through which minoritized and marginalized groups are encouraged or forced to adopt dominant norms and practices.
broadening participation	A way of thinking about equity, similar to access, that seeks to increase the participation of members of underrepresented and/or marginalized groups in CS and CS Ed. These groups have historically been excluded from computing fields.
equality	An approach to addressing inequity that focuses on giving everyone the same resources and opportunities.
equity as access	Giving all students the opportunities and support they need to participate in CS. Equity as access emphasizes giving everyone what they need to participate in mainstream CS. This approach recognizes that members of marginalized groups may not have the same opportunities to participate in CS, leading to a focus on “broadening participation” in CS and CS Ed.
equity as transformation	A way of thinking about equity that recognizes that because the status quo tends to reproduce inequity, it needs to be transformed. Equity as transformation works to disrupt what is considered “normal” in CS disciplines and industries by valuing and centering marginalized knowledge systems, tools, and people.
ethnocomputing	The study of computational practices that are entwined in marginalized/minoritized communities’ cultural practices (Eglash et al., 2006).
generative computing	Computing approaches that connect computational thinking and computing practices to local community practices in culturally responsive ways (Lachney et al., 2021).
inequity	Injustice or unfairness that is created and reproduced by social forces. It is important to remember that “fairness” does not mean “sameness,” so working to right unfairness and inequity does not mean just giving everyone the same thing.
intersectionality	A theory that recognizes how people’s different identities (e.g., disability, gender, race, etc.) overlap and intersect, creating access to privilege or resulting in oppression in ways that cannot be understood or addressed by considering each identity separately (Crenshaw, 1991; Collins, 2019).
language agnostic	Computing approaches that focus on core computing skills that can be applied across different programming languages.
marginalized/minoritized identities	We use both “marginalized” and “minoritized” as adjectives to emphasize how social processes actively construct inequity (Black et al., 2023). The term “minoritized” emphasizes historical systematic oppression and may be used regardless of whether an identity group actually represents a numerical minority in a context (see Black et al., 2023; Flores & Rosa, 2015).
social justice	A view that wealth, opportunities, and privileges should be equitably distributed to all members of society.
underrepresentation	A group of people who are not represented within a context or setting proportionate to their overall representation within the general population.

References

Alim, H. S., Paris, D., & Wong, C. P. (2020). Culturally sustaining pedagogy: A critical framework for centering communities. In N. S. Nasir, C. D. Lee, R. Pea, & M. McKinney de Royston (Eds.), Handbook of the cultural foundations of learning (pp. 261-276). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203774977-18

Annamma, S. A., Connor, D., & Ferri, B. (2013). Dis/ability critical race studies (DisCrit): Theorizing at the intersections of race and dis/ability. Race Ethnicity and Education, 16(1), 1-31. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2012.730511

Apraci-Dusseau, A., Astrachan, O., Barnett, D., Bauer, M., Carrell, M., Dovi, R., Franke, B., Gardner, C., Gray, J., Griffin, J., Kick, R., Kuemmel, A., Morelli, R., Muralidhar, D., Osborne, R. B., & Uche, C. (2013). Computer science principles: Analysis of a proposed advanced placement course. In T. Camp, P. Tymann, J. D. Dougherty, & K. Nagel (Eds.), SIGCSE ‘13: Proceeding of the 44th ACM technical symposium on computer science education (pp. 251-256). ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE). https://doi.org/10.1145/2445196.2445273

Black, C., Cerdeña, J. P., & Spearman-McCarthy, E. V. (2023). I am not your minority. Lancet Regional Health Americas, 19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lana.2023.100464

Blikstein, P. (2018). Pre-college computer science education: A survey of the field. Google LLC. https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/pre-college-computer-science-education-report.pdf

Collins, P. H. (2019). Intersectionality as critical social theory. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478007098

Computer Science Teachers Association. (n.d.). Inclusive teaching pedagogies. https://csteachers.org/inclusive-teaching-pedagogies/

Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241-1299. https://doi.org/10.2307/1229039

Davis, K., White, S. V., Becton-Consuegra, D., & Scott, A. (2021). Culturally responsive-sustaining computer science education: A framework. Kapor Center. https://www.kaporcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/KC21004_ECS-Framework-Report_final.pdf

Delpit, L. D. (1988). The silenced dialogue: Power and pedagogy in educating other people’s children. Harvard Educational Review, 58(3), 280-299. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.58.3.c43481778r528qw4

Eglash, R., Bennett, A., O’Donnell, C., Jennings, S., & Cintorino, M. (2006). Culturally situated design tools: Ethnocomputing from field site to classroom. American Anthropologist, 108(2), 347-362. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.2006.108.2.347

Fletcher, C. L., & Warner, J. R. (2021). CAPE: A framework for assessing equity throughout the computer science education ecosystem. Communications of the ACM, 64(2), 23-25. https://doi.org/10.1145/3442373

Flores, N., & Rosa, J. (2015). Undoing appropriateness: Raciolinguistic ideologies and language diversity in education. Harvard Educational Review, 85(2), 149-171. https://doi.org/10.17763/0017-8055.85.2.149

Gay, G. (2018). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice (3rd ed.). Teachers College Press.

González, N., Moll, L., & Amanti, C. (2005). Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households, communities, and classrooms. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Grapin, S. E., Pierson, A., González-Howard, M., Ryu, M., Fine, C., & Vogel, S. (2023). Science education with multilingual learners: Equity as access and equity as transformation. Science Education, 107, 999-1032. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21791

Gutiérrez, R. (2009). Framing equity: Helping students “play the game” and “change the game.” Teaching for Excellence and Equity in Mathematics, 1(1), 4-8. https://www.todos-math.org/assets/documents/TEEMv1n1excerpt.pdf

Hammond, Z. L. (2015). Culturally responsive teaching and the brain: Promoting authentic engagement and rigor among culturally and linguistically diverse students. Corwin.

Jones, S. T. & melo, n. a. (2021). We tell these stories to survive: Towards abolition in computer science education. Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, 21, 290-308. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42330-021-00158-2

Lachney, M., Babbitt, W., Bennett, A., & Eglash, R. (2021). Generative computing: African-American cosmetology as a link between computing education and community wealth. Interactive Learning Environments, 29(7), 1115-1135. https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2019.1636087

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Education Research Journal, 32(3), 465-491. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312032003465

Lewis, J. E., Arista, N., Pechawis, A., & Kite, S. (2018). Making kin with the machines. Journal of Design and Science. https://doi.org/10.21428/bfafd97b

Madkins, T. C., Howard, N. R., & Freed, N. (2020). Engaging equity pedagogies in computer science learning environments. Journal of Computer Science Integration, 3(2), 1-27. https://doi.org/10.26716/jcsi.2020.03.2.1

Margolis, J., Goode, J., & Chapman, G. (2015). An equity lens for scaling: A critical juncture for exploring computer science. ACM Inroads, 6(3), 58-66. https://doi.org/10.1145/2794294

McDermott, R. P. (1993). The acquisition of a child by a learning disability. In S. Chaiklin & J. Lave (Eds.), Understanding practice (pp. 269-305). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511625510.011

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2022). Science and engineering in preschool through elementary grades: The brilliance of children and the strengths of educators. National Academies Press. https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/26215/science-and-engineering-in-preschool-through-elementary-grades-thebrilliance

National Equity Project. (n.d.). Educational equity definition. https://www.nationalequityproject.org/education-equity-definition

New York City Public Schools. (n.d.). Ethnocomputing: Computational thinking of indigenous and vernacular cultural designs. New York City Public Schools CS4All. https://sites.google.com/schools.nyc.gov/cs4all-equity/eecs/ethnocomputing

Perez, M., & Garcia, P. (2023). Tracing participation beyond computing careers: How women reflect on their experiences in computing programs. ACM Transactions on Computing Education, 23(2), 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1145/3582564

Philip, T. M., & Azevedo, F. S. (2017). Everyday science learning and equity: Mapping the contested terrain. Science Education, 101(4), 526-532. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21286

Rebora, A. (2021). Zaretta Hammond on equity and student engagement. Educational Leadership, 79(4), 14-18. https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/zaretta-hammond-on-equity-and-student-engagement

Scott, K. A., Sheridan, K. M., & Clark, K. (2015). Culturally responsive computing: A theory revisited. Learning, Media and Technology, 40(4), 412–436. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2014.924966

Vogel, S., Santo, R., & Ching, D. (2017). Visions of computer science education: Unpacking arguments for and projected impacts of CS4All initiatives. In M. E. Caspersen, S. H. Edwards, T. Barnes, & D. D. Garcia (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computing Education (pp. 609-614). ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education. http://doi.org/10.1145/3017680.3017755

Vossoughi, S., & Vakil, S. (2018). Toward what ends? A critical analysis of militarism, equity, and STEM education. In A. I. Ali & T. L. Buenavista (Eds.), Education at war: The fight for students of color in America’s public schools (1st ed., pp. 117–140). Fordham University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt2204pqp

Resource 1: Working Toward Equity in CS Classrooms