“It’s Working - We’re Bosses” – A Study of Contentious Moments of Learning, Identity and Power in the Context of a Coding Project

Abstract

This study addresses how power issues are worked out in situ as youth engage in joint-meaning making and identity work in the context of a coding project at the crossroads of formal and informal science education. Based on an ethnographic case study of one team’s forms of engagement in the coding project over the school year, we document shifts in participation and emergent relations with others, materials, and tools, and the manner these shifts are ethnically and politically laden moments of contentious moments of meaning making and becoming in STEM. We make evident how learner experiences and identity work are entangled with subtle ethnic, class, gender and linguistic differences, and in doing so, attend to power through a multilayered analysis of the coding project.