CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Nowadays, there is a renewed interest on the introduction of Programming skills within the educational system. This is encouraged in part, by the availability of visual programming environments. However, in some countries this is still an ongoing process. Even though there are plenty of teachers? courses and resources worldwide, it is important to address sociocultural particularities of specific contexts, to enable a situated learning as social practice. Societies are technologically constructed at the same time as technologies are socially configured. In this sense, tools are not neutral or passive elements when used in a situation. On the contrary, they are going to co-construct the activity of which they are part. Therefore, in order to address the complexity of educational programming practices in a situated context, it is fundamental to reflect on the socio-technical framework where they took place. According to this framework, an innovative teacher professional development course was designed, proposing the construction of scratch projects as technologies for social inclusion. These are considered a way of designing, developing, implementing and managing technology oriented to solve social and environmental problems, generating dynamics of social inclusion and sustainable development.This study presents the main results of this exploratory case study, presenting data collected during the course and final projects. Results show that while participating in the designed course, teachers from diverse subjects and backgrounds worked together in interdisciplinary scratch projects that promoted awareness of different social issues present in their contexts. Their projects revealed that technological tools like Scratch, could serve as a platform not only to develop programming skills but also to encourage and support critical citizenship, civic engagement and responsible participation trough situated practices in schools context.