Recoding technology: How an Adolescent Black Girl Reimagined Dominant Narratives About Computing and Herself Through Electronic-Textiles Quiltmaking

This study proposes the integration of speculative methodologies in computing education to enliven justice and future-oriented scholarship related to adolescent Black girls, whose capacities to imagine futures in computing are constrained by “sociocultural codes” of white masculinity and anti-Black sexism maintained throughout the field. Theorizing identity as self-and others'-narratives, this study employed restorying as a pedagogical tool for honoring Black girls' multiple identities when designing and reimagining possible computing futures. During a two-part workshop implemented for an informal STEM program at a local science museum, sixteen, 14-15-year-old marginalized youth designed interactive electronic textiles (hereafter, e-textiles) quilt patches restorying dominant narratives about computing technologies. Given the unique marginalization of Black girls specifically, this study drew from race critical code studies to conceptualize how youth used computing technologies to “recode” narratives regarding whose futures in computing matter, asking: How does the process of “recoding” support one adolescent Black girl’s computing identity work? Data collected included youths’ workshop artifacts, video observations and field notes, and researcher memos, and through conducting multiple, inductive, comparative rounds of data analysis, this paper presents an account of how one Black girl participant, Larry, leveraged her identities as a female gamer and basketball player to restory a video game as inclusive of women’s stories. By engaging youth of color in “recoding” through interactive, e-textiles quiltmaking, this study illustrates how centering the everyday, lived histories of Black girls can inform the design of more empowering, speculative methodologies in computing education.