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Given the increased need for broadening participation in computing, there must be a focus not just on providing culturally relevant content but also on building accessible and inclusive computational tools. Most efforts to design culturally responsive computational tools redesign surface features, often through making nominal changes to add cultural meaning, yet the deeper structural design remains largely intact. We take a critical perspective towards novice programming environments to elucidate how the underlying structure privileges particular epistemologies and cultures. In this paper, we examine how the cultural practice of storytelling is supported and/or inhibited within novice programming tools. We draw upon the experiences of 38 Native American youth, who worked in teams to create place-based, interactive stories and games for their community. Findings offer insights to the embedded cultural biases that exist in the structures of computational tools. We discuss insights for how to address cultural biases and promote deeper integration of cultural practices in future designs of culturally responsive computational tools.

Introduction Symposium on Educational Inclusion: What is Critical Race Theory in Education? Indiana University South Bend hosted the Symposium on Educational Inclusion on November 12-13, 2021. The November 12 event [...]

We examine culturally relevant/responsive pedagogy (CRP) and its extensions--culturally based and culturally sustaining and revitalizing pedagogy--focusing on Native American/Indigenous education. Teasing out the roots of these pedagogies in Indigenous education systems, we follow their "footprints" in contemporary education practices. How might these models of Indigenous CRP help nurture diverse learner assets, foster students' critical engagement with power and privilege, and (re)imagine and act for a socially just world?

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The current school reform era has moved through a series of phases, coupling state centralization with a focus on school-level change at each step. Yet this era of reform also has a deeper history. Its deeper history reveals the dynamics that would plague the school reform era until the present day. While the school reform era seemed to focus on school-level change, it was actually a process of state (and federal) centralization. Setting standards and creating high stakes testing programs were state efforts with which schools were expected to comply. Thus, school-level reform became implicated in linking individual schools more tightly to state policy. This in turn put school districts in a novel position. That is, how was the district to understand its role when accountability policy linked the schools tightly with the state policy? In some instances, accountability policies created a situation where some districts found that abdicating their authority over local schools made good sense. Indeed, studies of urban school districts revealed that this abdication can take more than one form. The situation being created by accountability policy means that people may need to rethink the idea of school districts as public institutions. In this article, the authors review the history of school districts in order to set the context for the changes being prompted by accountability policy. Next, they discuss their research (funded by the Rockefeller Foundation) in four urban school districts and how it illuminated the ways in which school districts were struggling to find their role on this redefined scene of public policy. Finally, the authors suggest some ideas for reconceptualizing school districts themselves.

In 2007, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma amended its constitution to limit membership to only those who can trace lineal descent to an individual listed as "Cherokee by Blood" on the final Dawes Rolls. This exercise of sovereignty paradoxically ties the Dawes Rolls, the colonial instruments used to divide the lands and peoples of the Cherokee Nation, and self-determination. In the process, it effectively disenrolls Cherokee Freedmen, the descendants of Blacks enslaved by the Cherokee Nation. In this article, we explore the implications of this history in the context of self-determination and sovereignty, particularly looking at the influence of colorism on the Dawes Rolls and its ongoing effects. Our goal is to share a piece of history that is often obscured or unknown; to explore how and to what extent the exercise of self-determination and sovereignty in Indigenous nations is impacted by colorism; and finally to consider implications for practice created by the disenfranchisement of peoples from Indigenous nations.