Teaching Computing to K-12 Emergent Bilinguals: Identified Challenges and OpportunitiesK12
This program is tentative and subject to change.
Emergent bilingual (EB) students are a growing population within the United States. An increasing number of these students are in K-12 computing courses. Since programming languages are primarily grounded in English, K-12 computing teachers have to balance and tailor their instruction to meet the needs of EB students. Teachers informed us of insufficient computing education resources for teaching EBs programming. Through a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with eight K-12 computing teachers who have EB students in their classes, we identified emph{challenges} they faced in teaching programming to EBs and emph{strategies} they use to support their EB students. Our analysis revealed three challenges: (1) students can experience cognitive overload from translating between English and their native language, (2) terminologies have different meanings across disciplines (e.g., `algorithm’ in Math and CS), and (3) educators’ low computing self-efficacy. Two strategies teachers implemented to address their students’ needs were: (1) providing multiple ways for EB students to engage with content focused on preventing them from becoming overwhelmed (2) offering multiple modalities for translating computing concepts. This study contributes to the ongoing discussion on inclusive computing education by offering insights into educators’ needs and potential solutions for supporting EB students’ computing education.