Intercultural Computing Education: Toward Justice Across Difference

Abstract

Even in the turn toward justice-oriented pedagogy, computing education tends to overlook the quality of intergroup relationships, which risks entrenching division. In this article, we establish an intercultural approach to computing education, informed by intercultural and peace education, prejudice reduction, and the sociology of racism and ethnicity. We outline three major concerns of intercultural computing: shifting from content toward relationships, from cultural responsiveness to cultural reflexivity, and from identity to identification. For the last, we complicate discourses of race and identity widespread in U.S. education. Drawing from studies of youth programming classes in East Africa and U.S. contexts, we then reflect on our attempts to address the first shift of fostering relationships across difference. We highlight three promising design tactics: intergroup pairing, interdependent programming, and making relational goals explicit. Overall, we find that computing can indeed be a site of intergroup bonding across difference, but that bonding can carry complications and tensions with other equity goals and tactics. Rather than framing justice-oriented CS primarily as changes to the aims of computational learning, we argue that future work should explore making relational goals explicit and teach students how to attend to friction.

Perspectives About the State of Undergraduate Computing Education in Nigeria

“…Existing research on undergraduate computing education in Nigeria has primarily focused on elementary and secondary education (Basson, 2021;Dlamini & Dewa, 2021;Tshukudu et al, 2023), cultural relationships and methods (Arawjo & Mogos, 2021;López-Quiñones et al, 2023), and technology's role in improving learning experiences (Agbo et al, 2021;Bukar et al, 2016;Olutola et al, 2021;Thomas et al, 2020;Uzorka & Olaniyan, 2023). Some research has explored the relationship between undergraduate education and graduate employability, emphasizing the importance of practical skills and real-world examples (Chukwuedo & Ementa, 2022).…”