Exploring the Difficulties African-American Middle School Girls Face Enacting Computational Algorithmic Thinking over three Years while Designing Games for Social Change

A Summary of Effective Gender Equitable Teaching Practices in Informal STEM Education Spaces

“…Programs that allow girls to drive the design around personally relevant topics (e.g. creating experiences for girls to explore topics that they care about or that impact their community) improve their interest and attitudes toward science and technology (Buchholz et al, 2014;Cakir et al, 2017;Erete et al, 2016;Robinson et al, 2016;Stewart-Gardiner et al, 2013;Thomas et al, 2017). For example, educators can ask girls about their backgrounds, interests, and community to connect STEM to their lives or they can have girls choose topics to explore that they find personally relevant and meaningful.…”

“…In the last decade, the call for safe and inclusive environments where girls feel like they belong has been raised (Hubert, 2014;Sammet and Kekelis, 2016). And yet, many research studies have not focused on the learning environment (for some exceptions see: Adams et al, 2014;Cakir et al, 2017;Riedinger and Taylor, 2016;Thomas et al, 2017). But to fully support girls from diverse backgrounds, including girls of color in STEM, we need to move beyond inclusion and incorporate culturally responsive teaching (Brown, 2017;Gay, 2013;Ladson-Billings, 2008;.…”

“…Informal educational settings are uniquely situated to support this culture because of the additional resources and time for engagement in and reflection of ill-defined problems or activities (Jethwani et al, 2016;Ryoo and Kekelis, 2018;Thomas et al, 2017). However, much of the research related to productive struggle has occurred in formal classroom settings in the context of mathematics and science (Toh and Kapur, 2017;Warshauer, 2015).…”

“…This authoring is shaped by how they see themselves and how others see them in multiple spaces (e.g. in-school, out-ofschool, home/family (Allen & Eisenhart, 2017;Calabrese Barton et al, 2013;Koch et al, 2015)) and across intersecting power domains related to gender, race, ethnicity, and class (Archer et al, 2015;Brunning et al, 2015;Carlone et al, 2015;Thomas et al, 2017).…”

Game-based collaborative learning framework for computational thinking development

“…They conducted an experiment in two sixth-grade classes. The authors of [21] describe an experience of African-American middle school girls Figure 1 PBL life cycle presented by [16] who engaged in collaborative game design to learn CT for social change. They use Scratch and AppInventor to build the games.…”