Holding a Safe Space with Mutual Respect and Politicized Trust: Essentials to co-designing a justice-oriented high school curricular program with teachers

Continued and amplified harm to marginalized communities by computing solutions is pushing computing education to orient towards justice. Resisting harm requires elevating teacher voices within curricular design. We partnered with twelve high school teachers to co-design and revise an existing introductory computing program. We qualitatively analyzed post-co-design teacher inter- views to answer the following: (1) How did teachers perceive their involvement in curricular design? (2) What design aspects of the curricular revision did teachers identify as important to participate as co-designers? (3) What design features supported or challenged teacher participation? Being involved in co-design made teachers feel valued and respected rather than deprofessionalized. Holding a safe space with politicized trust was key to their participation, and opportunities to reflect, share, and listen from diverse perspectives were essential. Policies around curricular design work should emphasize empowering trusting teacher communities to advance justice-oriented goals within computing education.