Languages, literacies and literate programming: can we use the latest theories on how bilingual people learn to help us teach computational literacies?

In this theory paper, we explore the concept of translanguaging from bilingual education, and its implications for teaching and learning programming and computational thinking in especially computer science (CS) for all initiatives. We review theory from applied linguistics, literacy, and computational literacy, using translanguaging to examine how programming is and isn’t like using human languages, ultimately framing CS as computational literacies. We describe a pedagogical approach to teaching computational literacies, providing a design narrative that describes activities from bilingual middle school classrooms integrating Scratch into academic subjects. We find that translanguaging pedagogy can leverage learners’ (bilingual and otherwise) full linguistic repertoires as they engage with computational literacies. Our data helps demonstrate how translanguaging can be mobilized to do CS, which has implications for increasing equitable participation in computer science.