What is it about?
Low female representation in elective computer science (CS) courses at school remains an issue in England. This poster presents a teacher-led, small-scale research project designed to explore the factors that influence 12-14 year old girls’ decisions to continue CS study in the context of one school. Qualitative data was gathered using a survey and focus groups to investigate girls’ decision-making from their own perspectives. The thematic analysis of this data revealed three main interrelated factors as Usefulness, Interest and Difficulty indicating key directions for future interventions.
Featured Image
Photo by Thomas Park on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Gender balance in CS still presents a problem in many countries and at all levels, and it is essential to investigate this issue in a variety of contexts including compulsory education. Our findings highlight the complexity of the relationships between the factors affecting girls’ choices and suggest directions for the development of gender balance interventions at school. These results from a single setting could be explored in a range of other contexts to understand how changes to curriculum design and pedagogy can positively affect female participation in CS.
Perspectives
I hope this work is useful for educators and researchers looking to improve gender balance in CS and encourage more girls to choose this subject for their elective courses. Conducting this research project was a great experience as it allowed me as a practitioner to collaborate with professional researchers in CS education and to reflect on my practice in a more systematic way. I also hope that this example of collaboration might inspire more practitioner-led inquiries in partnerships with research teams.
Alexandra Price
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: It's Useful But Not Interesting: Girls on Computing in School, September 2024, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery),
DOI: 10.1145/3689535.3689536.
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