Decoloniality, Digital-coloniality and Computer Programming Education

Abstract

Like digital technologies themselves, programming education is embedded in the colonial matrix of power, and access to programming knowledge demands immersion in the epistemologies of the Global North. While there is a growing body of work exploring ways to decolonise programming education, far more needs to be done. Current research focuses on the language of instruction and contextual curricula; outward-facing engagements with decolonisation. However, to move toward digital-decoloniality involves scrutinising how programming knowledge is recontextualised within curricula. Part of the project should be equipping both educators and students with the tools to recontextualise programming itself. To dismantle the colonial logic embedded in programming education, attention must be given to the knowledge formation of the discipline to identify moments of disruption. One such moment is the difficulty students face when recontextualising their mental models of computing, from programming skills to programming concepts. This occurs at the moment of reading, tracing and writing code. Programming requires one to refocus computational thinking and engage with a specific semiotic system, translating the authors' intention into an executable computational process. Disrupting this moment using the strategies of critical literacies opens computer programming and its resulting code to critical examination, allowing an inward-facing decolonial engagement with the discipline.