Cultivating Positive ICT Perceptions: an application of the MST-tree model to the GGC Initiative

What is it about?

Globally, women account for a small percentage of students and professionals in ICT-related fields. In order to increase female participation in this area, governments worldwide have been facilitating targeted interventions. One such initiative is the ‘Guyanese Girls Code’ (GGC) training program. This program was launched in 2018 with the aim of using Scratch and the BBC micro:bit to introduce girls at the Grade 7 to 9 levels to ICT education. In this paper, we propose a novel teaching model, the ‘Motivation, Support and Teaching Components’ tree model (MST-tree model). This model was critical to the design of GGC’s curriculum and teaching strategies. An evaluation was conducted to gather information on the program participants’ ICT perceptions and their experience of the training. The key findings revealed that the participants had a significant interest in learning about ICT even though they perceived the area to be difficult and local training opportunities to build their knowledge and skills were insufficient. Further, the girls portrayed high levels of self-efficacy, since they were interested in the program modules that they perceived to be most challenging. These findings suggest that the teaching model may address negative ICT perceptions when teaching females at the Grade 7 to 9 levels. As such, the MST-tree model has the potential to inform the design and execution of similar training programs and interventions.

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Photo by Robo Wunderkind on Unsplash

Photo by Robo Wunderkind on Unsplash