Centering Environmental Justice in Computing Education

Abstract

In this Birds of a Feather, we will discuss the roles of computing education in preparing students to understand and address the disparate impacts of climate change in local and global contexts. We intend to have open discussions on the challenges and opportunities related to connecting computing education with climate change and the injustices that climate change exacerbates. We will focus discussions around three questions: (1) How can we center justice-based perspectives on understanding and addressing climate change in computing education? (2) What are the relationships between computing, climate change, and overall environmental impacts? and (3) How should we reimagine traditional notions of ‘‘development’’ and ‘‘progress’’ in computing in ways that challenge how current framings within computing misunderstand or misteach computing’s environmental impacts? We invite all computing educators, researchers, administrators, practitioners and anyone else with any level of curiosity about climate change to join this discussion (because it affects all of us!). Expected outcomes for this Birds of a Feather include sharing resources and experiences to build a community for knowledge sharing and collaborations.