What's Your Problem?" ANT Reflections on a Research Project Studying Girls Enrolment in Information Technology Subjects in Postcompulsory Education (original) (raw)
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Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 2011
The participation rates of girls in post-compulsory information technology courses of Australian universities and high schools have remained low (less than 30%), despite three decades of research and analysis. In seeking to better understand this phenomenon, this paper draws upon data collected during an Australian Research Council Linkage project to investigate first, the reasons that teachers and students in contemporary Australian high schools put forward to account for girls' underrepresentation; second, the assumptions about gender that underpin these explanations; and third, the extent to which teachers appear able to respond to the full range of factors shaping girls' decision making. The paper argues that attempts to improve girls' participation rates might continue to falter unless teacher education programs explicitly prepare teachers to conceptualise educational reforms based on understandings of post-structural perspectives on gender; perspectives that challenge the more common explanations for girls' behaviour associated with both essentialist and socialisation mindsets.
International Journal of People-Oriented Programming, 2012
The percentages of girls in developing countries studying information technology subjects in the post-compulsory years of education has remained persistently low: often under 25%. This is despite the fact that this particular phenomenon has been the subject of international enquiry for over two decades. The persistence of this pattern raises questions about the extent to which the factors influencing girls’ decision making are fully understood and associated questions about the ways in which both the problem and solution are most usefully conceptualized. This paper explores the limitations of dominant ways of explaining girl’s underrepresentation in information technology courses and careers and argues the need for a more holistic approach to designing and enacting interventions. It draws particular attention to the need for ongoing research in this area which seeks to map the persistence of narrow and limiting understandings of gender that continue to thrive in contemporary IT and ...
Rethinking the ‘problem’ of gender and IT schooling: discourses in literature
Gender and Education, 2008
A review of the international research literature pertaining to gender and information technology (IT) schooling reveals changing ideas about what constitutes a gender problem. Much of the literature is concerned with gender differences in computer uses and interests and perceived disadvantages accruing to females as a result of these differences. This reflects and contributes to a dominant liberal equity discourse. Growing awareness of the limitations of earlier research, the changing nature of IT schooling, contradictions in students' computer interests and dissatisfaction with simplistic explanations has led, however, to post-structural rethinking and the emergence of a critical discourse. Assumptions of essential differences and deficit ways of thinking are challenged. Persistent gender differences in IT use are explored in their social complexity and the very notion that there is a gender problem is problematised. This presents a different and ultimately more satisfying way of thinking about the problem of gender and IT schooling.
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The overall picture of the situation relating to gender and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has so far been that men have been dominating the field and have left the women behind. This has also been the point of departure for policymakers. But, as will be shown in this paper, this male domination of the entire ICT field is not the case anymore. On the contrary, the situation is far more complex. For example, when looking at younger generations, the picture appears to be nuanced; both boys and girls seem to be involved and interested in using different ICT tools, both at school and elsewhere (CERI, 2010). Moreover, along with the new generation, there is the emergence of the new social media, in which girls seem to be highly involved. The present paper explores the ways in which the gender issue appears in youngsters’ use of and attitudes towards ICT and how they perform and interact as producers and consumers of digital content.
An Inconvenient Truth: the invisibility of Women in ICT
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It poses the question of why research conversations around women in ICT are still pedagogically ignored, even after over twenty years of gender research and projects. In reporting the findings of this research project it seeks an understanding of and remedy for the steep decline of interest and uptake of ICT places at tertiary institutions in Australia, particularly amongst young women. In addition to understanding gender differences in educational motivation and performance, and appreciating the challenges posed to ICT education, readers must also be cognisant of the steep decline of interest in careers in ICT in general.
Journal for computing teachers, 2011
Lynch, Julianne 2009, Declining participation in computing education: An Australia perspective on the "gender and lT" problem, Journal for computing teachers, Spring, pp. 1-12. Participation in post-compulsory computing education has declined over recent years, both in the senior years of secondary school and at university. This trend has been observed in most developed countries, despite reported and projected skills shortages in Information Technology (IT) industries. Within the computing education enrollment mix, girls and women continue to be under-represented and recent years have seen female participation fall even more rapidly than that of males. This article reports on findings of an Australian study which explored secondary school students’ beliefs about and attitudes towards computing education and careers in IT. Factors that might discourage girls in particular from pursuing post-compulsory computing education and careers are discussed, along with broader implications for school education in an era when information and communication technologies are an integral part of our daily lives. Findings include the persistence among both boys and girls of inaccurate and outdated views of the field of IT and low expectations of both school IT curricula and pedagogy in terms of their relevance and interest for students. Many of the issues identified as discouraging students in general from pursuing computing education appear to have a greater discouraging effect on girls, and this is compounded by stereotypical views of the field as male-dominated and unwelcoming to women and girls.
Breaking the Barriers: Empowering Girls in Information and Communication Technology Education
DEStech Transactions on Social Science, Education and Human Science
Gender inequality is one of the main factors of the digital divide in developing countries. In Bangladesh, the participation of female students in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) and ICTs (Information and Communication Technology) is not satisfactory. Despite of an improvement in recent years, there is a shortage of women pursuing careers in ICT in Bangladesh. In this paper, an initiative namely ″#missingdaughter″ was discussed which is taken to engage more women in ICT education in Bangladesh. The impact of this initiative in STEM was explored.