How did Visual Programming Activities that Were Designed to Fit into a High School Barbering Classroom Shape Black Boys' Attitudes Toward Computer Science?

Black children are underrepresented in high school computer science (CS) courses. Thus, there has been increased attention by the CS education research community to engage Black children in CS learning. However, there has been less research that focuses on designing CS learning opportunities specifically for Black boys. We introduce one attempt to address this gap with a culturally responsive computing project that seeks to connect CS and barbering education in meaningful ways: Barbershop Computing. We explore two Barbershop Computing interventions within a high school barbering classroom. We ask: how did visual programming activities that were designed to fit into a high school barbering classroom shape Black boys' attitudes toward CS? Through analyses of pre- and post-surveys, we show how one of the interventions shaped students' perceptions of the value of CS. We end with a discussion about broadening the scope of technologies that should be seen as relevant to CS education.