Integrating hacker culture into code literacy education

Abstract

In this algorithm-driven era, code literacy is being deliberately promoted as a complement to digital literacy. The concept of hack has recently been paid attention to as a phenomenon in code literacy education. Educational initiatives such as hackathon and hackerspace have been under the spotlight. However, there is still a lack of academic research delving into those initiatives, or more broadly, into code literacy education, from the hacker culture perspective. Thus, the scope of this study is to understand how the characteristics of hacker culture are integrated into code literacy education. The current study is designed under the interpretivist paradigm and qualitative research approach. Six thematic interviews were conducted with six Finnish educational experts and practitioners to explore how they perceived hacker culture as an educational concept and how they had brought the characteristics of hacker culture into their educational practices. The interview data then was analyzed using thematic analysis method. The findings show that the integration of hacker culture into code literacy education is beneficial for both students and educators. This integration encourages students’ collaboration, creativity, tinkering skills and helps to bring more playfulness to the class. Besides, student diversity, which manifests in students’ different levels, interest and genders, is also embraced in a coding class. In addition, the findings show that Finnish students have fairly easy access to tools and devices required for their technological exploration. The present study also reveals the perception of educators towards hacker culture as an educational concept. From their viewpoint, promoting hacker culture in code literacy education is to advocate self-directed learning, exploratory attitude, open sharing and collaboration. This research also gains some insights into the implementation of code literacy education in Finland. Code literacy is being actively advocated by different education sectors. However, the vagueness of instructions in the Finnish National Core Curriculum regarding code literacy makes the teaching practice depend strongly on teachers who are directly responsible for organizing coding activities in the class. Finally, the study brings out some implications for educational policy and future research work. The educational policy focusing on nurturing talented students, who are good at and interested in coding, should be set out, as those students will form the backbone of hacker culture in the future. In the academic area, more studies should be conducted with a larger sample size to capture a more holistic picture of this research topic.