“Los programadores debieron pensarse como dos veces”: Exploring the Intersections of Language, Power and Technology with Bi/Multilingual Students

Authors

Sara Vogel, CUNY Graduate CenterFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Fall 10-2021

Abstract

Critical computing approaches to K-12 Computer Science (CS) education aim to promote justice in computing and the wider world. Despite being intertwined with inequitable power dynamics in computing, issues of linguistic (in)justice have received less attention in critical computing. In this article, I draw on theoretical ideas from sociolinguistics and critical computing to analyze qualitative data collected in computing and technology-integrated language and humanities classes serving emergent bi/multilingual middle school students. Conversations about language, technology, and power were close at hand in focal classrooms, and surfaced in moments when students acted as users and critics of, and tinkerers with digital tools. Students exercised agency in relation to both technology and language – using their budding understandings of language to question digital tools, and their engagements with tools to challenge traditional language ideologies. I build on past scholarship and the findings of this analysis to argue for the development of critical translingual computing education – an approach that would engage especially language-minoritized students in critical computing to build on and affirm their language practices and promote linguistic justice in CS education, fields, and tools.

Comments

This is a pre-print / pre-proof version of this article, which was published in ACM Transactions on Computing Education, available at DOI: 10.1145/3447379