How Do We Assess Equity in Programming Pairs?

Abstract

We comparatively apply methods for assessing equity to find ways that allow us to better interrogate, describe, and understand the construct’s complexities. To do so, we replicate prior work assessing equity in programming pairs (Lewis & Shah, 2015; Shah, Lewis, & Caires, 2014) by creating distributions of coded (1) computer use, (2) turns of talk, and (3) questions and commands; furthermore we build upon their application by (4) examining students’ embodied interaction and social positioning. Using these four methods to analyze the discourse of a pair of students programming, we identified numerous examples of positioning shifts, and see how inequities could potentially emerge through discursive mechanisms. We then reflect on what each of these four different methods foreground, their strengths and shortcomings, including their sensitivity to time-scope and pedagogy, and triangulate the quantified and qualitative results.