Culturally Responsive Design of Learning Kits

We investigate how programming tools can reflect and support children’s cultural identities, interests, and everyday experiences. Our work asks how children draw on cultural resources when creating with code, and how learning technologies can make room for those resources within computational learning. In collaboration with Dr. Natalie Rusk at the MIT Media Lab, we explore culturally responsive design through OctoStudio. More specifically, we examine children’s coding projects to understand how they draw on and transform cultural resources through creative expression, and also investigate how the possibilities and constraints of programming tools shape the ways children can represent experiences that matter to them.

Our focus includes children from non-Western contexts and groups historically marginalized in computing. By attending to the resources children bring to learning, we aim to develop design guidance that supports their agency and cultural expression. This research connects questions about the design of programming tools with broader questions about participation, identity, and whose experiences are represented in computing education.