On Terminology

Words matter. And words really matter when we use them to describe and talk about people. The words we choose can reaffirm identities and demonstrate respect for others. They can also alienate and reproduce stereotypes and harmful labels. Words are a part of language, and language is a living thing that changes over time. Language is influenced by society, culture, and the people who use it every day.

While there is not always a clear or simple answer to which words are the “right” ones to use, we can push ourselves to be thoughtful in the language we choose and the messages our words convey. Often, the ideal involves asking individuals what language they would prefer to use to describe themselves (American Psychological Association [APA], 2022; Mack & Palfrey, 2020). Because of the limits we faced in writing this book for a broad audience, we worked to be reflective in our choice of terms, consistent in their use throughout the guide, and transparent about our decisions.

We recognize that there are thoughtful arguments for using a variety of words. We also know that words change over time. What a word means at one point in time in one context may come to mean something very different at another time in another situation. The words we are choosing for this guide now may need to be revised in the future, as meanings change and as new words are offered that better capture what we want to express.

In the sections that follow, we outline some of our choices and our rationales for the terminology used throughout this guide. We provide references as resources and invite you as readers to consider which words may best capture and communicate meaning in your own settings and contexts. We hope that thinking about this will help you in your role as computer science (CS) educators to recognize how terms used in educational policy and practice may be exclusionary and to reflect on the language you use with and about your students.

Language Related to Race and Ethnicity

We recognize that racial and ethnic identity labels are socially constructed and rooted in histories of racialized oppression. We also acknowledge that these labels are inconsistently applied and change over time (Harris, 1993). Furthermore, CS spaces often reproduce racialized inequity.

Often, an individual’s racial and ethnic identities cannot be adequately captured by standardized categories or designations. For example, categories commonly used in educational research and policy (like Asian, Black, Hispanic, Latine, or white) may refer to people who have histories and ancestry from many different places, who have diverse phenotypic features, and who have a range of different lived experiences. Recognizing these complexities and the limitations of category labels, we have made the following decisions about race-related language, outlined in Table 1.

Table 1

Language Related to Race and Ethnicity

Issue	Explanation
Race and ethnicity as social constructs	Examples: race-ethnicity We consider race and ethnicity as social constructs that shape identities and lived experiences. Racial labels are frequently linked to physical features, while ethnic labels are often defined based on cultural group membership (Blake, 2016). Depending on the contexts and topics considered in this book, we highlight race, ethnicity, or both at different times. We recognize both race and ethnicity—and the conflicts that emerge related to them—as relevant to issues of inequity in CS and CS Ed. For example, Chapter 8 uses the term “race-ethnicity” to capture how both constructs need to be considered as part of developing racial and ethnic literacy. We also acknowledge that institutional categories do not always clearly distinguish between the two. For example, the U.S. Federal Census and the Advanced Placement exams have used terminology that conflate race and ethnicity and have adjusted the categories they have used over the years, highlighting how these categories are socially constructed (e.g., Brown & Thompson, 2020)
Language that indicates racialization as a social process	Examples: racialized bilingual or racially minoritized students We recognize that everyone is racialized through social processes. The terms above are examples of negative racialization, where being racialized is often linked to marginalization and oppression. However, white is also a race. Being racialized as white may afford individuals more privilege in many educational contexts. We strive to use language that emphasizes racialization as a social process and race and ethnicity labels as socially constructed terms.
Racial and ethnic category names	Examples: Asian American, Black, Pacific Islander We use racial and ethnic category names to acknowledge how they have become socially salient. We capitalize these names with one exception (white), discussed below. When we cite research or policy, we preserve the terminology and punctuation of the original source.
Capitalization of white	Example: white students We choose not to capitalize white to avoid recentering whiteness (Crenshaw, 1991; Harris, 1993; Laws, 2020) and to distinguish our use of the term from the white supremacist practice of capitalizing it (Daniszewski, 2020). However, we recognize that compelling arguments exist on both sides of this decision (e.g., Mack & Palfrey, 2020; Nguyên & Pendleton, 2020).
Use of Latine	Example: schools with large numbers of Black and Latine students We use the term “Latine” instead of related terms like “Latino,” “Latina,” “Latinx,” “Latin@,” or “Hispanic.” Latine is a gender-inclusive pronoun that follows existing Spanish language patterns (National Institutes of Health [NIH], 2024). The term was created by gender non-binary, queer, and feminist communities in Spanish-speaking countries (Cambio Center, n.d.; El Centro, n.d.).
Use of Indigenous	Example: Indigenous students are less likely to have access to CS Ed We use the term “Indigenous” collectively to refer to the descendants of those who lived in North America prior to European colonization. We recognize that this term collapses the diversity of Indigenous nations around the world. To avoid reinforcing static and monolithic interpretations, we try to use plural phrasing like “Indigenous peoples” or “Indigenous cultures” (APA, 2022; NIH, 2024).
Use of “people of color”	We avoid using the term “people of color” because of how it recenters whiteness by othering those who are racialized as non-white and because of how it collapses and essentializes racially marginalized groups (Kim, 2020). We do keep the term when it is used in direct citations.

Language Related to Gender and Sexual Orientation

We recognize that individual gender identity, expression, and sexual orientation is varied. We also acknowledge that those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and trans, queer and questioning, intersex, asexual or agender, two-spirit, and other related identities often face marginalization and exclusion from CS spaces. We work to attend to this reality by using inclusive language in the following ways outlined in Table 2.

Table 2

Language Related to Gender and Sexual Orientation

Issue	Explanation
Use of gender-affirming language	When referring to specific individuals, we use pronouns that affirm individuals’ gender identities.
Avoiding use of gender-marked language	We avoid broad gender-marked language, including words like “mankind” or “seminal” (The Writing Center, n.d.).
Addressing the gender binary in CS and CS Ed	At times, we refer to gender categories in this guide in ways that reinforce a binary conception of gender (e.g., boys, girls). This is primarily done to emphasize how CS and CS Ed often reinforce these binaries, such as when reporting statistics that highlight gender-based inequities. We try to surface this reality and emphasize the need to think more expansively. To do this, we use terms like “non-binary,” “gender non-conforming,” or “LGBTQIA2S+” to indicate inclusion of individuals with a range of identities (The Gender and Sexuality Campus Center [GSCC], n.d.; GLAAD, n.d.).

Language Related to Disability

We recognize that the idea of disability is socially constructed and shaped by legal definitions, social contexts, and medical diagnoses (Annamma et al., 2013). We also recognize that language often reinforces negative stereotypes about disability (National Center on Disability and Journalism [NCDJ], 2021). We try to use language that avoids reinforcing people without disabilities as the “norm” (National Education Association [NEA], n.d.). Our decisions about language related to disability are outlined in Table 3.

Table 3

Language Related to Disability

Issue	Explanation
Avoiding ableist language	Example: make visible We avoid ableist language and outdated and condescending terminology (Rahman, 2019). We also work to avoid metaphorical language related to disability, like “make visible” and phrases like “simple” and “simply” that imply a neurotypical norm.
Use of “common sense”	In everyday terms, “common sense” may reinforce ableist norms by implying that something should be easily understood or accepted by society. However, when we use the term, we do so in line with scholars who have challenged the term as being neither common nor sensical (e.g., Fairclough, 2014; Garfinkel, 1967). Our use of the term often seeks to examine how what we assume to be “common sense” actually serves to reproduce inequity.

Language Related to Bi/Multilingualism

We recognize that dominant beliefs in the United States tend to reinforce English monolingualism as the norm. This results in educational policies and practices that identify students who are learning English as lacking in some way. We work to contest this reality by referring to people who speak multiple languages as outlined in Table 4.

Table 4

Language Related to Bi/Multilingualism

Issue	Explanation
Avoiding deficit-based terms	Examples: English Learners, English Language Learners We avoid using deficit-based terms for bi/multilingual students (Flores & García, 2020).
Use of asset-based terminology	Examples: emergent bi/multilingual We use terms that emphasize students’ varied and dynamic linguistic resources. We use “multilingual” to highlight how we may not be able to assume that a learner only uses two languages and may have a broader linguistic repertoire (Holdway & Hitchcock, 2018).

References

American Psychological Association. (2022, July). Racial and ethnic identity. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/bias-free-language/racial-ethnic-minorities

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

Blake, R. (2016). Toward heterogeneity: A sociolinguistic perspective on the classification of Black people in the twenty-first century. In H. S. Alim, J. R. Rickford & A. F. Ball (Eds.), Raciolinguistics: How language shapes our ideas about race (pp. 153-169). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190625696.003.0009

Brown, A. V., & Thompson, G. L. (2020). How foreign are the Spanish advanced placement world language exams? The case of ethnicity, bilinguality, and heritage learner candidates. Hispania, 103(2), 181-198. https://doi.org/10.1353/hpn.2020.0031

Cambio Center (n.d.). Hispanic, Latin@, Latinx or Latine? Cambio Center, University of Missouri. https://cambio.missouri.edu/about/hispanic-latin-latinx-or-latine/

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

Daniszewski, J. (2020, July 20). Why we will lowercase white. Associated Press. https://blog.ap.org/announcements/why-we-will-lowercase-white#:~:text=But%20capitalizing%20the%20term%20white,that%20white%20is%20the%20default.

El Centro. (n.d.). Why Latinx/é? El Centro at Colorado State University.
https://elcentro.colostate.edu/about/why-latinx/#:~:text=Language%20is%20complicated.,identify%20outside%20the%20gender%20binary.

Fairclough, N. (2014). Language and power (3rd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315838250

Flores, N., & García, E. S. (2020). Power, language, and bilingual learners. In N. S. Nasir, C. D. Lee, R. Pea, & M. McKinney de Royston (Eds.), Handbook of the cultural foundations of learning (pp. 178-191). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203774977-12

Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Polity Press.

GLAAD. (n.d.). An ally’s guide to terminology: Talking about LGBT people & equality. https://media.glaad.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/25203738/allys-guide-to-terminology_1-2c9.pdf

Harris, C. I. (1993). Whiteness as property. Harvard Law Review, 106(8), 1701-1791. https://doi.org/10.2307/1341787

Holdway, J., & Hitchcock, C. H. (2018, October). Exploring ideological becoming in professional development for teachers of multilingual learners: Perspectives on translanguaging in the classroom. Teaching and Teacher Education, 75, 60-70. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2018.05.015

Kim, E. T. (2020, July 29). The perils of “people of color.” The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-activism/the-perils-of-people-of-color

Laws, M. (2020, June 16). Why we capitalize “Black” (and not “white”). Columbia Journalism Review. https://www.cjr.org/analysis/capital-b-black-styleguide.php

Mack, K., & Palfrey, J. (2020, August 26). Capitalizing Black and White: Grammatical justice and equity. MacArthur Foundation.
https://www.macfound.org/press/perspectives/capitalizing-black-and-white-grammatical-justice-and-equity

National Center on Disability and Journalism. (2021, August). Disability language style guide. https://ncdj.org/style-guide/

National Education Association. (n.d.). Words matter! Disability language etiquette.
https://www.nea.org/words-matter-disability-language-etiquette

National Institutes of Health. (2024, January 17). Race and national origin. https://www.nih.gov/nih-style-guide/race-national-origin

Nguyên, A. T., & Pendleton, M. (2020, March 23). Recognizing race in language: Why we capitalize “Black” and “White.” Center for the Study of Social Policy. https://web.archive.org/web/20250318065619/https://cssp.org/2020/03/recognizing-race-in-language-why-we-capitalize-black-and-white/

Rahman, L. (2019, July). Disability language guide. Stanford Disability Initiative Board. https://disability.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj26391/files/media/file/disability-language-guide-stanford_1.pdf

The Gender and Sexuality Campus Center, Michigan State University. (n.d.). Glossary. Michigan State University.
https://gscc.msu.edu/education/glossary.html#:~:text=The%20GSCC%20primarily%20uses%20the,sign%20signifies%20additional%20identity%20terms.

The Writing Center, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. (n.d.). Gender-inclusive language.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240625060227/https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/gender-inclusive-language/