Educational Programming Practices that Inspire Change: Social Justice as Situated in a Computer Programming Course

This paper presents the results of semester-long integration of situating social justice content and contextual topics in a computer science data structures course at a Historically Black College. Computer Science (CS) education practices often include many active learning pedagogies that encourage students to develop internalized constructs of the theoretical underpinnings of programming languages and environments of computing applications with less focus on the applied concepts that personalize new-found skills for students in the classroom [3]. The primary objective of this innovative pedagogical practice focuses on reframing technical concepts in a computer science data structures class. In this work we motivate students to develop programming assignments that are framed as an aspect of a technical solution within the lens of social justice applications in an inquiry-based learning pedagogy. We show that by scaffolding the socio-innovative practices with topical content, students can experience topical-based competencies in the context of addressing real-world problems that can prepare them for problem-solving skills that will follow them beyond graduation.