Portraits of Native Identity in Computer Science for Academic Persistence
TERC Presenter Series
With the cancellation of many conferences this year and reduced audiences for those who did present, the TERC's Communications team thought it would be nice for staff to still be able to disseminate their presentations. As a response, we developed the TERC Presenter Series. Over a few months we set up Zoom presentations for projects to share their work and for those of us inside and outside of TERC learn more about the ongoing research.
The third presentation in our series was given by Nuria Jaumot-Pascual, Kathy DeerInWater, and Christina Bebe Silva on Thursday, June 25, 2020.
This presentation features the findings of the study titled, Native Women and Two-Spirit Individuals in Computing Higher Education: A Photo Elicitation Study of Persistence (NAWC2). NAWC2 is a one-year study funded by the Women of Color in Computing Collaborative (Kapor Center/Center for Gender Equity in Science and Technology, ASU). This study uses the method of photo elicitation (Harper, 2002), which inserts participant-generated photographs in one-on-one interviews, to understand the experiences of Native women and two-spirit individuals’ persistence in computer science and how their identities intersect.
We will learn through participants’ photographs and words about how they persist in computing undergraduate education. Participants are motivated in their studies by the prospects of giving back to their Native communities and contributing to the preservation of their group’s cultures and languages. They also use their cultures as a source of strength to persist and are motivated to challenge stereotypes of Native cultures. Through their CS education, participants resist the histories of colonization that their people have suffered and point out the ways Native cultures and CS/STEM converge and diverge. The presentation will also include recommendations for institutions interested in retaining Native students in their CS programs.
Reference
Harper, D. (2002). Talking about pictures: A case for photo elicitation.Visual Studies, 17(1), 13-26.
