| Today, most young people in the United States (U.S.) live technology-saturated lives. Their educational, entertainment, and career options originate from and demand incredible technological innovations. However, this extensive ownership of and access to technology does not indicate that today's youth know how technology works or how to control and use it to spawn innovation and create. The Computer Science Education (CSEd) research community recently made recommendations to help get young students more engaged in computer science, have longer exposure to the field's concepts and practices, and thus use this longevity to persist through higher education and into computer science careers. However, low-income students and African American/Black students currently still have the least access to computer science learning opportunities when compared to that of all other student counterparts. More recommendations are needed for targeting, reaching, and teaching computer science to this and all underrepresented populations. As such, the dissertation study presented here suggests and explores enhancements for the CSEd research community and CS educators to improve the teaching and learning of computational thinking and computer programming concepts for young African American students. These enhancements include: 1) using rigorous social science and education research methods, 2) focusing exclusively on underrepresented students (African American in this case), and 3) applying culturally relevant pedagogy.;In doing so, a convergent parallel mixed method research design is used to observe, describe, and compare how young African American novice programmers learn and use computational thinking and programming skills in two learning environments: 1) using culturally relevant pedagogy where students are assigned to a communal learning group where they work in pairs, and 2) an individual learning group where they work individually. Findings highlight performance outcomes as well as strategies used while learning along with impact on resulting learning context preference, and Black Academic Identity. |
