Publications by Clifford Lee
Reading Research Quarterly, 2024
Rapidly developing technological advances have raised new questions about what makes us uniquely ... more Rapidly developing technological advances have raised new questions about what makes us uniquely human. As data and generative AI become more powerful, what does it mean to learn, teach, create, make meaning, and express ourselves, even as machines are trained to take care of these tasks for us? With youth, and in the context of literacy and media education, we embrace this moment to broaden our social imaginations. Our collaboration with journalists ages 14–25 from 2019 to 2023 has yielded a corpus of over 30 multimodal compositions constructed with and/or about AI reaching audiences in the millions. On the basis of these youth texts – produced within our participatory research at YR Media, a national STEAM learning center and platform for emerging BIPOC content creators – we developed the conceptual framework presented here: Humanizing Data Expression (HDE). The key role of expression in HDE distinguishes the human from the machine through the lens of storytelling. Analysis of this corpus (podcasts, web-based interactives, videos, radio features, online posts, social media assets) revealed four literacy practices of YR Media authors as they made sense of AI: (1) contextualize: try out AI-powered features, reveal how it works; (2) unveil authorship: introduce AI creators and processes; (3) grapple: explore tensions and paradoxes; (4) play: hack, mess with, outsmart, exaggerate AI. From these insights, we end with implications of HDE as a framework for learning and teaching AI literacy, including its potential for critically transforming data literacy practice and pedagogy across schools, teaching, and teacher education.
ACM Transactions on Computing Education, 2022
Over the past two decades, innovations powered by artificial intelligence (AI) have extended into... more Over the past two decades, innovations powered by artificial intelligence (AI) have extended into nearly all facets of human experience. Our ethnographic research suggests that while young people sense they can t trust AI, many are not sure how it works or how much control they have over its growing role in their lives. In this study, we attempt to answer the following questio ns: 1) What can we learn about young people s understandings of AI when they produce media with and about it? 2) What are the design features of an ethics-centered pedagogy that promotes STEM engagement via AI? To answer these questions, we co-developed and documented three projects at YR Media, a national network of youth journalists and artists who create multimedia for public distribution. Participants are predominantly youth of color and those contending with economic and other barriers to full participation in STEM fields. Findings showed that by creating a learning ecology that centered the cultures and experiences of its learners while leveraging familiar tools for critical analysis, youth deepened their understanding of AI. Our study also show ed that providing opportunities for youth to produce ethics-centered Interactive stories interrogating invisibilized AI functionalities, and to release those stories to the public, empowered them to creatively express their understandings and apprehensions about AI.
Handbook of Research in Educational Technology - 5th edition, 2020
This chapter reviews the perspectives and scholarship that address educational equity through the... more This chapter reviews the perspectives and scholarship that address educational equity through the application of technology and digital tools. We first explore how equity is framed in global discourse and the role that educational technology has played in both addressing and perpetuating disparities in achievement. Policymakers, designers, and researchers have routinely attempted to use digital technologies to address the learning needs of historically marginalized populations. Before we examine these technological interventions in context, we must first explore the root causes of what “counts” as an achievement gap as well as what “counts” as technology. Following this overview, this chapter then offers a sociocultural rationale for what equity-centered approaches to educational technology could look like. These guidelines are offered to ground design, research, and pedagogy and build on a foundation that strengthening the relationships fostered in formal learning environments is essential to improving learning outcomes sustainably. Much of the literature on educational technology centers on its innovations, effectiveness, efficiencies, and the promise of quick fixes to systemic and entrenched educational problems. Scant research has examined its role in addressing inequity (Tawfik, Reeves, & Stich, 2016). Specifically, we question what educational technology can do for students who contend with intergenerational forms of institutional racism, classism, and sexism. How can educational technology be used to liberate students instead of perpetuate inequalities in the schooling system? What does it look like to utilize an equity-centered approach to educational technology in school and out-of-school contexts?
Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination: Case studies of creative social change, 2020
This book chapter examines the possibilities of challenging the call to teach "code for all!" wit... more This book chapter examines the possibilities of challenging the call to teach "code for all!" with "code for what?". Through a series of youth-created projects, we demonstrate the possibilities of fostering civic imagination through computational learning and vice versa by creating products that prioritizes an equity-centered lens. Using a "critical computational literacy" framework, we teach teens and young adults to create web- and mobile-based interactive projects that address inequities and give voice to communities that contend with various systems that stifle their growth and freedom. For young people, creating these projects entails both forming a critique of what's gone wrong in the area they aim to address (food, housing, violence, health, etc.) and developing a clear and specific vision of what a better world might look like as a result of the technology they produce.
Critical computational literacy (CCL) is a new pedagogical and conceptual
framework that combines... more Critical computational literacy (CCL) is a new pedagogical and conceptual
framework that combines the strengths of critical literacy and computational thinking. Through CCL, young people conceptualize, create, and disseminate digital projects that break silences, expose important truths, and challenge unjust systems, all the while building skills such as coding and design. This empirical study of CCL is based at Youth Radio, a nationally recognized multimedia production company in Oakland, California. Using embedded ethnographic methods, we focus on one collaborative project inside Youth Radio’s Interactive department, where young people partnered with adult colleagues to produce a web-based interactive map of gentrification in a West Oakland neighborhood. Findings demonstrate a highly sophisticated knowledge production process where youth are simultaneously contending with content, message, audience, aesthetics, design, functionality, execution, and the long-term ramifications or “digital afterlife” of their work. Through learning environments organized around critical computational literacy, young people emerge as critical problem-solvers unified by the technical know-how and the critical consciousness necessary for them to leverage digital tools for social
transformation.
By utilizing digital tools that are nearly ubiquitous in the lives of youth, writing teachers can... more By utilizing digital tools that are nearly ubiquitous in the lives of youth, writing teachers can leverage these practices for developing traditional English language arts instruction and skills proposed by state and federal standards. In this chapter, the authors propose how the development of computational literacies through multimodal writing and video game design can help guide critical and academic development in an inner-city Los Angeles public school.
In a research project where high school youth designed and created (programmed) a video game about an issue significant in their lives, students demonstrated their critical computational literacies, a concept that blends the critical consciousness of critical literacy and the skills and concepts behind computational thinking. Critical computational literacy offers the ability to integrate two seemingly divergent fields. By using these new media tools, students developed a more expansive and sophisticated way to communicate their ideas. This has significant possibilities for the English Language Arts, where most K-12 state standards still relegate students’ literacies to over-indulgence of traditional means of reading and writing of text. In an ever-evolving culture that increasingly places more significance on visual, auditory, and textual stimuli through multimodal media on computers and mobile devices (Hull & Nelson, 2005; Jenkins, 2006; Kress, 2010), schools must educate our students to critically “read” messages in the media, and in turn become effective producers of these tools of communication (Alvermann et al., 1999; Margolis, 2008; Morrell, 2008). This research showed students engaged in deep, reflective processes in the production of their multimodal texts.
Digital Media and Learning Research Hub, Feb 21, 2014
This volume highlights compelling firsthand counter-narratives from educators engaged in solving ... more This volume highlights compelling firsthand counter-narratives from educators engaged in solving an array of challenges in today’s classrooms. It draws together narratives from an inspiring group of educators within the National Writing Project—a collaborative network of instructors dedicated to enhancing student learning and effecting positive change—that contributes to our understanding of what “Digital Is” (DI). DI is a web community for practitioners with high levels of expertise and a deep commitment to engaging today's youth by fostering connections between their in- and out-of-school digital literacy practices. Furthermore, DI is about sharing experiences that offer visibility into the complexity of the everyday classroom, as well as the intelligence that the teaching profession demands.
The chapters in this volume represent a bold re-envisioning of what education can look like, as well as illustrate what it means to open the doors to youth culture and the promise that this work holds. While there are certainly similarities across these diverse narratives, the key is that they have taken a common set of design principles and applied them to their particular educational context. The examples aren't your typical approaches to the classroom; these educators are talking about integrating design principles into their living practice derived from cutting-edge research. We know from this research that forging learning opportunities between academic pursuits, youth’s digital interests, and peer culture is not only possible, but positions youth to adapt and thrive under the ever-shifting demands of the twenty-first century. We refer to this approach as the theory and practice of “connected learning,” which offers a set of design principles—further articulated by this group of educators—for how to meet the needs of students seeking coherence across the boundaries of school, out-of-school, and today’s workplace. Taken together, these narratives can be considered “working examples” that serve as models for how educators can leverage connected learning principles in making context-dependent decisions to better support their learners.
The movement in national educational policy towards teaching a singular, non-accented American St... more The movement in national educational policy towards teaching a singular, non-accented American Standard English reached a crescendo with the Arizona Board of Education’s attempt to prevent any teacher with a “heavy accent” or “ungrammatical” speech from teaching English. We suggest that part of what underlies the fears that were articulated in Arizona are ideologies about language learning (as well as about language itself). We challenge those ideologies as we present a model of language development and curriculum that recognizes and affirms the multiple tools or “repertoires of linguistic practice” that all young people possess. Our research suggests that when students are supported in examining their various language practices, the insights they gain will help them work towards mastery over all of their linguistic “tools,” including those tools that are most valued by dominant society.
Linguistics and Education, Nov 17, 2012
In this manuscript we report on a curriculum design project in which we worked with students in a... more In this manuscript we report on a curriculum design project in which we worked with students in an urban immigrant community to study their own language practices in different contexts. We gathered videotaped data of students in the classroom as well as videos they took of their language practices in other settings. We focus on one student's engagement in this project, and ask how he uses language as a communicative tool in two different activity settings: filling out a form at home with his father, and filling out a form at school. We illuminate variations in this boy's use of language as a communicative and meaning-making tool across these activity settings, finding that he drew on a broader set of communicative tools in interactions with his father at home, including multi-modal communicative strategies, than he did in a similar activity in school. We use these data to complexify discussions of continuities and discontinuities in everyday and school language practices. We conclude with suggestions for how schools can support students' use of language as a tool for thinking and acting in diverse contexts.
Learning, Media and Technology
Despite the fact that computer science (CS) is the driver of technological innovations across all... more Despite the fact that computer science (CS) is the driver of technological innovations across all disciplines and aspects of our lives, including participatory media, high school CS too commonly fails to incorporate the perspectives and concerns of low-income students of color. This article describes a partnership program – Exploring Computer Science (ECS) – that directly counters this problem in our nation’s second largest school district. With a mission of democratizing CS learning, we argue that despite
the constraints of working within public schools, it is imperative to do so. We discuss the ECS program based on inquiry, culturally relevant curriculum, and equity-oriented pedagogy. We describe two ECS-affiliated
projects that highlight the importance of authorship, purpose, and agency
for student learning and engagement: DietSens using mobile technology to study community health, and a project in which students create video games about social issues. Our work offers a counter-narrative to those who have written off the possibilities of working within public schools and a debunking of the too widespread myth within our educational system that females and students of color are inherently uninterested in rigorous CS learning.
This paper examines the language practices of a middle school native-Spanish speaker in various s... more This paper examines the language practices of a middle school native-Spanish speaker in various school and out-of-school settings and interview data from the student and some of his teachers. Data was collected through participant observations and semi-structured interviews of this student in different settings. Observations and analyses were made about the complexity of his language practices, the switches that occur and his meta-linguistic awareness of them. Semi-structured interviews with teachers were analyzed to gauge the potential influence of their language ideology in shaping the student's language practices. The purpose of this ethnographic case study was focused on the question of how the intersectionalities of setting, audience, purpose, activities, participants’ discourse(s) and ideology inform the language practices of a middle school native-Spanish speaker in a major metropolitan community in America?
Papers by Clifford Lee
Kappan, 2023
Traditional teacher education and alternative teacher preparation programs struggle to recruit an... more Traditional teacher education and alternative teacher preparation programs struggle to recruit and retain prospective and early-career educators of color. To address this challenge, Jalene Tamerat and Clifford Lee recount their experiences as teachers and teacher educators-of color. They propose a reframing of pedagogies, curricula, and programmatic structures so they will more effectively center the cultural assets and critical perspectives among future educators of color. They share their personal reflections and offer an overview of the current educational landscape to contextualize and ground their recommendations for how teacher training programs can be more attuned to the needs of teacher candidates from minoritized and historically marginalized backgrounds.
Education Policy Analysis Archives, 2015
This article addresses the questions, “How should we evaluate the quality of teaching?” and “What... more This article addresses the questions, “How should we evaluate the quality of teaching?” and “What kind of evaluation system will move all California teachers on a path of improvement throughout their careers?” The article, adapted from a report written by a group of accomplished California teachers, recommends seven core principles to develop a system of teacher evaluation that provides meaningful and ongoing inputs and moves teachers on a path of continuous improvement throughout their careers. It also addresses some of the elements of accountability that the state system writ large can adopt to create a system that fosters high-quality teaching.
Paper presented in a Presidential Session at the annual meeting of the American Educational Resea... more Paper presented in a Presidential Session at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, IL
Uploads
Publications by Clifford Lee
framework that combines the strengths of critical literacy and computational thinking. Through CCL, young people conceptualize, create, and disseminate digital projects that break silences, expose important truths, and challenge unjust systems, all the while building skills such as coding and design. This empirical study of CCL is based at Youth Radio, a nationally recognized multimedia production company in Oakland, California. Using embedded ethnographic methods, we focus on one collaborative project inside Youth Radio’s Interactive department, where young people partnered with adult colleagues to produce a web-based interactive map of gentrification in a West Oakland neighborhood. Findings demonstrate a highly sophisticated knowledge production process where youth are simultaneously contending with content, message, audience, aesthetics, design, functionality, execution, and the long-term ramifications or “digital afterlife” of their work. Through learning environments organized around critical computational literacy, young people emerge as critical problem-solvers unified by the technical know-how and the critical consciousness necessary for them to leverage digital tools for social
transformation.
In a research project where high school youth designed and created (programmed) a video game about an issue significant in their lives, students demonstrated their critical computational literacies, a concept that blends the critical consciousness of critical literacy and the skills and concepts behind computational thinking. Critical computational literacy offers the ability to integrate two seemingly divergent fields. By using these new media tools, students developed a more expansive and sophisticated way to communicate their ideas. This has significant possibilities for the English Language Arts, where most K-12 state standards still relegate students’ literacies to over-indulgence of traditional means of reading and writing of text. In an ever-evolving culture that increasingly places more significance on visual, auditory, and textual stimuli through multimodal media on computers and mobile devices (Hull & Nelson, 2005; Jenkins, 2006; Kress, 2010), schools must educate our students to critically “read” messages in the media, and in turn become effective producers of these tools of communication (Alvermann et al., 1999; Margolis, 2008; Morrell, 2008). This research showed students engaged in deep, reflective processes in the production of their multimodal texts.
The chapters in this volume represent a bold re-envisioning of what education can look like, as well as illustrate what it means to open the doors to youth culture and the promise that this work holds. While there are certainly similarities across these diverse narratives, the key is that they have taken a common set of design principles and applied them to their particular educational context. The examples aren't your typical approaches to the classroom; these educators are talking about integrating design principles into their living practice derived from cutting-edge research. We know from this research that forging learning opportunities between academic pursuits, youth’s digital interests, and peer culture is not only possible, but positions youth to adapt and thrive under the ever-shifting demands of the twenty-first century. We refer to this approach as the theory and practice of “connected learning,” which offers a set of design principles—further articulated by this group of educators—for how to meet the needs of students seeking coherence across the boundaries of school, out-of-school, and today’s workplace. Taken together, these narratives can be considered “working examples” that serve as models for how educators can leverage connected learning principles in making context-dependent decisions to better support their learners.
the constraints of working within public schools, it is imperative to do so. We discuss the ECS program based on inquiry, culturally relevant curriculum, and equity-oriented pedagogy. We describe two ECS-affiliated
projects that highlight the importance of authorship, purpose, and agency
for student learning and engagement: DietSens using mobile technology to study community health, and a project in which students create video games about social issues. Our work offers a counter-narrative to those who have written off the possibilities of working within public schools and a debunking of the too widespread myth within our educational system that females and students of color are inherently uninterested in rigorous CS learning.
Papers by Clifford Lee
framework that combines the strengths of critical literacy and computational thinking. Through CCL, young people conceptualize, create, and disseminate digital projects that break silences, expose important truths, and challenge unjust systems, all the while building skills such as coding and design. This empirical study of CCL is based at Youth Radio, a nationally recognized multimedia production company in Oakland, California. Using embedded ethnographic methods, we focus on one collaborative project inside Youth Radio’s Interactive department, where young people partnered with adult colleagues to produce a web-based interactive map of gentrification in a West Oakland neighborhood. Findings demonstrate a highly sophisticated knowledge production process where youth are simultaneously contending with content, message, audience, aesthetics, design, functionality, execution, and the long-term ramifications or “digital afterlife” of their work. Through learning environments organized around critical computational literacy, young people emerge as critical problem-solvers unified by the technical know-how and the critical consciousness necessary for them to leverage digital tools for social
transformation.
In a research project where high school youth designed and created (programmed) a video game about an issue significant in their lives, students demonstrated their critical computational literacies, a concept that blends the critical consciousness of critical literacy and the skills and concepts behind computational thinking. Critical computational literacy offers the ability to integrate two seemingly divergent fields. By using these new media tools, students developed a more expansive and sophisticated way to communicate their ideas. This has significant possibilities for the English Language Arts, where most K-12 state standards still relegate students’ literacies to over-indulgence of traditional means of reading and writing of text. In an ever-evolving culture that increasingly places more significance on visual, auditory, and textual stimuli through multimodal media on computers and mobile devices (Hull & Nelson, 2005; Jenkins, 2006; Kress, 2010), schools must educate our students to critically “read” messages in the media, and in turn become effective producers of these tools of communication (Alvermann et al., 1999; Margolis, 2008; Morrell, 2008). This research showed students engaged in deep, reflective processes in the production of their multimodal texts.
The chapters in this volume represent a bold re-envisioning of what education can look like, as well as illustrate what it means to open the doors to youth culture and the promise that this work holds. While there are certainly similarities across these diverse narratives, the key is that they have taken a common set of design principles and applied them to their particular educational context. The examples aren't your typical approaches to the classroom; these educators are talking about integrating design principles into their living practice derived from cutting-edge research. We know from this research that forging learning opportunities between academic pursuits, youth’s digital interests, and peer culture is not only possible, but positions youth to adapt and thrive under the ever-shifting demands of the twenty-first century. We refer to this approach as the theory and practice of “connected learning,” which offers a set of design principles—further articulated by this group of educators—for how to meet the needs of students seeking coherence across the boundaries of school, out-of-school, and today’s workplace. Taken together, these narratives can be considered “working examples” that serve as models for how educators can leverage connected learning principles in making context-dependent decisions to better support their learners.
the constraints of working within public schools, it is imperative to do so. We discuss the ECS program based on inquiry, culturally relevant curriculum, and equity-oriented pedagogy. We describe two ECS-affiliated
projects that highlight the importance of authorship, purpose, and agency
for student learning and engagement: DietSens using mobile technology to study community health, and a project in which students create video games about social issues. Our work offers a counter-narrative to those who have written off the possibilities of working within public schools and a debunking of the too widespread myth within our educational system that females and students of color are inherently uninterested in rigorous CS learning.
These teenage and young adult producers created interactive projects that explored gendered and racialized dress code policies in schools; designed tools for LBGTQ+ youth experiencing discrimination; investigated facial recognition software and what can be done about it; and developed a mobile app to promote mental health through self-awareness and outreach for support, and more, for distribution to audiences that could reach into the millions. Working with educators and media professionals at YR Media, an award-winning organization that helps young people from underserved communities build skills in media, journalism, and the arts, these teens found their own vibrant answers to “why code?” They code for insight, connection and community, accountability, creative expression, joy, and hope.
The chapters in this volume represent a bold re-envisioning of what education can look like, as well as illustrate what it means to open the doors to youth culture and the promise that this work holds. While there are certainly similarities across these diverse narratives, the key is that they have taken a common set of design principles and applied them to their particular educational context. The examples aren't your typical approaches to the classroom; these educators are talking about integrating design principles into their living practice derived from cutting-edge research. We know from this research that forging learning opportunities between academic pursuits, youth’s digital interests, and peer culture is not only possible, but positions youth to adapt and thrive under the ever-shifting demands of the twenty-first century. We refer to this approach as the theory and practice of “connected learning,” which offers a set of design principles—further articulated by this group of educators—for how to meet the needs of students seeking coherence across the boundaries of school, out-of-school, and today’s workplace. Taken together, these narratives can be considered “working examples” that serve as models for how educators can leverage connected learning principles in making context-dependent decisions to better support their learners.