Exploring culturally responsive teaching practices in computational thinking + science lesson planning

Abstract In a design-based research project, we sought to create professional development for elementary teachers to integrate computational thinking and culturally responsive teaching in their science lessons. In this research brief, we focus on the culturally responsive teaching practices incorporated by teachers in our first sub-cycle of this work. We examined their poster presentations of science lessons which participating teachers modified to integrate computational thinking and culturally responsive teaching using our framework of seven key culturally responsive teaching practices. We found that the median lesson had evidence of full integration of one and partial integration of two of our practices, but also found that some of our practices were rarely or never integrated in these lessons. As broader implications, we note an indication of the strength of diversity in the analysis process, and the production of a subconjecture to our central design conjecture.