Many scholars have produced powerful equity-centered curricular and pedagogical approaches relevant to CS educators. However, well-intentioned educators and curriculum providers who intend to use culturally relevant approaches may mistakenly apply these frameworks and unintentionally enact what we refer to as “culturally specific” approaches to education. Such approaches fail to account for students’ multifaceted experiences of culture and identity in the design of their learning experiences, ignoring their specific needs, goals, and desires for their learning. Rather than delivering content for groups of culturally specific identities, this position paper describes a “cartographical” curricular and pedagogical approach informed by a rhizomatic philosophy of learning that fosters dialogue among students as individuals with unique identities, interests, and needs that teachers and students explore together through computer science education. We position rhizomatic pedagogy as an additional lens to apply alongside other frameworks for fostering equity—one that establishes a set of strategies for engaging students in dialogue around their learning experiences, empowering learners to participate in the co-construction of their educational spaces, and building curricula that express hyper-local, deeply situated, student-centered teaching and learning practices.

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