Author: Jesse Hall

Listen to Dr. Ryoko Yamaguchi’s interview on educational equity for the podcast Choose To Be Curious with Lynn Borton. Dr. Yamaguchi founded Bringing Student Equity to Education Now (B-SEEN), a parent group that advocates for and promotes more equitable, fair and racially just spaces for Arlington’s Black students. Made up of parents of Black students in Arlington Public Schools, the group advocates for policies and practices (within and outside of the classroom) that enhance, improve and make more welcoming all aspects of public education in Arlington County for Black students; share the knowledge, expertise, and networks of our members to collectively advocate for Black students before elected and non-elected decision makers in Arlington County; support one another as we navigate public education in Arlington County and work to collectively ensure the best possible outcomes for our Black students; and build a vibrant, connected and supportive community among family members, caregivers, and advocates of Black students through face-face events and gatherings, and social media spaces for networking and sharing. The  interview focuses on how we — parents, teachers, the whole community — might use curiosity to support equity in education.

Access podcast here: https://lynnborton.com/2020/08/19/curiosity-education-equity-with-ryoko-reed/

Dr. Ryoko Yamaguchi and her research team published initial findings of the student program, BRIGHT-CS, at the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) conference, entitled Promoting and Supporting Computer Science Among Middle School Girls of Color: Initial Findings from BRIGHT-CS. BRIGHT-CS (Building Student Retention through Individuated Guided coHort Training in Computer Science) is a research and development project that 1) creates a computer science learning ecosystem for middle school Black girls and other girls of color and 2) researches the merits of the ecosystem in supporting persistence in CS to determine best practices for broadening participation to other marginalized student groups in computing. First, this paper describes the BRIGHT-CS program, from the structural, instructional, and curricular designs of the program to partnerships with local and community organizations that make up the ecosystem. Second, it presents the initial findings of research on the program and its impacts on student outcomes such as social-emotional attributes associated with persistence. The study employs a multi-method descriptive design. Data includes student surveys, interviews (from students, parents, instructors, teachers, and mentors), artifact reviews, and student observations. The study includes 46 students across four middle schools in two states. At the start of the program, 37% of the students reported being very interested in CS, and 72% reported being very confident in learning CS. This is much higher than a national benchmark of students. After four months of program implementation, the qualitative results show a more nuanced picture of the value of a learning ecosystem. First, the ecosystem offers implicit messaging about equity and success. Second, the ecosystem offers explicit messaging about personal challenges and improvement. Third, following the implicit and explicit messaging to students, students went from naïve confidence to authentic self-efficacy in CS.

Access the paper here: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3328778.3366855

Watch the presentation that Dr. Ryoko Yamaguchi led with Arlington Public School educators, showcasing their Researcher-Practitioner Partnership (RPP). The presentation highlights Dr.
Yamaguchi’s equity framework, definition of equity, and how educators are learners and active designers for equity in their classroom and school. Educators talk about structural, instructional, and curricular barriers they identified through student empathy interviews. The presentation described a school improvement effort designed to promote linguistically and culturally diverse high school students to be college and career ready upon graduation through a researcher-practitioner partnership (RPP). The school improvement efforts focused on developing teachers as learners by 1) shifting the definition of what constitutes a “good” school—away from student outcomes, towards teacher outcomes; 2) understanding structural, instructional, and curricular barriers that diverse students face in their school through student voices; and 3) creating lesson plans that proactively remove barriers and explicitly nurture learning partnerships with students. The presentation showcased how the educators identified and removed structural, instructional, and curricular barriers and created supports in their circle of influence (their classroom).

Access the presentation here: https://vimeo.com/531412639/8e41bab3b5