Near-Peer Pedagogies for Culturally Sustaining Computer Science and Mathematics

Published in the Journal of Computer Science Integration (JCSI), co-authored with colleagues at The Young People's Project and Boston University.

In this study, College STEM Literacy Workers act as co-teachers in 9th and 10th grade classrooms alongside mathematics teachers as they learn to integrate a 30-hour integrated computer science/mathematics curriculum. We adapted the Algebra Project's "Model of Excellence" for culturally relevant, sustaining pedagogies and used it to examine how teachers understand College STEM Literacy Workers' contributions — and vice versa.

We found that while teachers and College STEM Literacy Workers did not individually instantiate the model of excellence, they were able to achieve its constituent components between them — pointing toward a new, collaborative model of excellence in near-peer teaching.

The work has implications for rethinking what excellence looks like in classrooms designed around shared, relational pedagogy.

Read in the Journal of Computer Science Integration →