“Education in my Hands”: Community Embedded Computing Education in a Youth Boxing Gym

Broadening the participation of Black youth in computer science (CS) is often focused on traditional classroom settings. However, formal school settings can be antagonistic to racially marginalized youth, which may diminish their enthusiasm for CS. We propose community embedded computing education (CECE) as a solution: CS education that is designed to be supportive of and conform to community life, activities, locations, and experiences. We examine a CECE program that was situated in a youth boxing gym that serves a Black community to answer two research questions: (1) How did a CECE program that was designed to be part of a location where Black youth spend time shape youths’ perceptions of their relationships to CS? (2) How did youth understand the relationships between computing, education, and the boxing gym where the CECE program took place? Our findings suggest that the program shaped youths’ perceptions of self-confidence and self-expression with CS, as well as helped them explore context-specific uses of CS within the gym that included but went beyond boxing.