Learning to Make a Difference: New Technologies, Gender, and In/Equity

Original Objectives	Research Training	International Aspects
Advancement of Knowledge	the Research Team	Preservation of Data
Practical Impact	the Partners	Back to GenTech

Original Objectives

The primary goal of the "GenTech Project" (http://www.educ.sfu.ca/gentech/) was to promote gender equity, in particular public school contexts, within the "new information technologies" domain. Evidence from research on gender and access to, and uses of, new information technologies (NIT's) indicates that in public schools, female staff and students (in comparison to male students) are: (a) disenfranchised with respect to access and kind of usage, (b) less likely to acquire technological competence, and (c) likely to be discouraged from assuming a leadership role in this domain (see for example: AAUW, 1998; Becker & Sterling, 1987; Bryson and de Castell, 1996/1998; Chen 1986; Colley, Gale & Harris, 1994; Collis, Kass & Kieran, 1989; Comber, 1997; Fletcher-Flinn & Suddendorf, 1996; Levin & Gordon, 1989; Shashaani, 1994, 1997; Sutton, 1991; Taylor & Mounfield, 1994).

Specifically, our goals were to (1) study non-school-based environments where women experience atypical levels of success with NIT's, and as a result of our inquiry, (2) generate a model for the implementation of to networked "micro-climates" within schools which would (3) encourage and support girls (and their female teachers) in doing technology-based work.

We proposed to study three non-school-based environments whose mandate explicitly includes the encouragement of equitable outcomes in relation to girls/women's uses of NIT's: Studio D at the National Film Board, (terminated in 1996, it was the "women's studio",), the Banff Center, particularly the technology-rich center for Banff's annual artists in residence program, and SCWIST, the Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology. We anticipated that this analysis would provide invaluable working models of gender equity in practice.

Advancement of Knowledge

The intent of the GenTech project was to create and sustain productive learning environments wherein all participants in an educational community, adults and children alike, learn and thrive as competent and confident users of new information technologies.

• Our analysis of interview data and documents produced by the non-school-based sites (NSB's) resulted in an account of three distinct kinds of models for the implementation of gender equity policy: "separationist", "patronage", and "mainstreaming". Studio D was a "separationist" model, a women-only (or almost only) workplace. Banff's is a "patronage" model, which creates a kind of short term "artist's colony" in which equity and inclusion across a range of dimensions and not just "gender" is emphasized. SCWIST's is a "mainstreaming" approach to achieving equity, one which encourages girls to enter traditionally male-dominated field, but whose focus is not principally on challenging or changing that pattern of male-domination within those fields.

   

• Our interviews with members of the non-school-based organizations underscored the need to study viability as a critical factor in gender-focussed models of educational intervention. These organizations, and their organizational resilience and/or vulnerabilities, were exemplified, in particular, by the demise of (project partner) N.F.B.'s Studio D, in 1996. In articulating models of non-school-based equity-oriented interventions, (separationist/patronage/ mainstreaming) we have found it productive to differentiate, analytically, relatively stable (e.g. SCWIST's "mainstreaming") models from relatively vulnerable (e.g. N.F.B.'s "separationist") models, a distinction whose value to an innovation-oriented educational theory of the development of competence cannot be understated. Indeed explicit attention to this critical factor of the viability of culturally de-stabilizing innovation will play a prominent role in our subsequent (Fall, 1999) SSHRC research proposal.

   

• Another important finding from our NSB research, which resulted in significant and valuable modification of the strategy for our school-based interventions, was that the apparent value of the commonly prescribed strategy of providing girls with adult "role models" in order to promote technological confidence may be overstated. Intensive residential participant-observation at the Banff Center for New Media Artists in Residence program, complemented by more than two dozen in depth interviews at the Banff Center, made more clearly apparent the preferability of "near peer" to "novice-expert" relations in the scaffolding of technological learning. a "gulf" between the "communities of practice" of the, and the forms of mature practice for which it seeks to "prepare" its students. We developed from that point onwards a reconceptualization of "networking communities of support", whether of teachers or of students in the school-based sites, as being better advanced by near-peer than by novice/expert pedagogical relationships.

Extensive analysis of district-based and Ministry of Education technology policies, survey and interview data, complemented by our analysis of a gender differences across a decade of B.C. course enrolment data, yielded significant findings, as follows:

•  The spread of technology-intensive areas in the school curriculum in which boys predominate is pervasive, with the notable exception of cooking and clothing and textiles courses. This finding has remained essentially unaltered throughout the duration of an explicit B.C. Ministry of Education "gender equity" policy. In other words, the situation of under-representation and disciplinary "gehttoization": for girls in B.C. public schools has not improved over the last ten years.

   

• New technologies are scarcely utilized in public secondary school courses. Technology use in elementary schools is typically narrow, and limited to word processing, drill and practice, and recreational games. Computers are used more frequently by males than females. Home usage, which is far more frequent than school usage, likewise reflects greater male usage and less problematic access.

   

• New technologies are fully integrated into the curriculum and used at all grade levels at the private school (girls) site we included in the GenTech project. Our interviews with the students at the private girlsí school indicated significantly higher levels of computer skill and confidence (compared to public school girls) and less stereotypically biased views of the gendered character of technological expertise.

   

• Students responses to questions about equality of interest, access, use and competence are wildly at variance with actual documented findings in these respects. In their responses to questions about differences in interest, access, use and competence, for example, students' perceived equality between males and females. Students' graphic representations of computer competence and incompetence, however, as assessed by a drawing task, were far more closely consistent with findings of significant discrepancy between males and females with respect to interest, access, use and competence.

   

• Over the course of the implementation of various school-based projects (elementary and secondary schools), a multi-faceted, comprehensive, and successful model for intervention was constructed and evaluated. GenTech's model for promoting gender-equitable uses of new technologies is as follows: (a) identify obstacles to the development of competence, (b) provide unfettered hands on access in girls-only and women-only groups, (c) build skills, experience and scaffolded competence through distributed, collaborative "bootstrapping", and (d) link users in a model of distributed expertise (following the model of near-peer scaffolding that we elucidated from non-school based sites).

Practical Impact

• A the completion of the GenTech project, all school-based participants had increased their computer skills, competence, and frequency of use of computers both at home and at school. Developing and sustaining a "community of practice" of female computer users meant, further, that participants, both teachers and students, were more likely, not only to claim an identity as "computer expert," but also to be identified by other teachers and students as "experts" -- an identity which had hitherto been assigned only to male students and teachers by both boys and girls.

   

• A "Girls First" computer center was established in one of our elementary school sites, with significant support (hardware) provided by (project partner) Hewlett Packard. GenTechís success resulted in a decision by Hewlett Packard to provide the hardware for a center in a second elementary school (Fall, 1998).

   

• Students and staff at two elementary and one secondary school learned basic computer literacy skills, including web page design and multimedia authoring. Project teachers were provided intensive instruction in integrating technology into the curriculum at both SFU and UBC sites. Support provided by project partner, Richmond School District, enabled the provision of release time training opportunities for district teaching staff.

   

• The B.C. Ministry of Education and the B.C. Ministry for Womenís Equality provided matching funds to support the development of an interactive, computer-based (on-line) instructional resource for GenTech teachers (and subsequently, others) to learn computer fundamentals. "Computers for Lunch" (http://www.sfu.ca/~cfl) (developed by Suzanne de Castell and Jennifer Jenson), also houses an email discussion list where teachers can discuss activities, resources and troubleshoot hardware and software problems collaboratively.

   

• GenTech created an extensive project website (http://www.educ.sfu.ca/gentech/) for the dissemination of articles, information, survey data and other gender/technology resources. The site has been widely utilized by students, teachers and researchers alike.

Research Training

GenTech investigators designed and facilitated training workshops for graduate student research assistants on: ethical conduct in research involving human subjects, semi-structured ethnographic interviewing, recording and utilizing fieldnotes, systematic and participant observation methods, documentary analysis, audio and video documentation, interview transcript analysis, computer fundamentals, digital editing, coding of survey data, and report-writing.

The Research Team

The core research team consisted of Mary Bryson (Principal), Suzanne de Castell (co-) and Ph.D. student Jennifer Jenson. This core team worked with UBC graduate students Judith Kootte and Jennifer Faulkner at an elementary school site, SFU graduate students Lynda Brown, Erica Meiners at a secondary school site, Elsbeth Anjos at another elementary school site, Cailey Crawford worked a private school site, Kathryn Alexander at Banff, Charmaine Perkins at the NFB. Undergraduate student Anne Lattimer conducted research at SCWIST, and UBC graduate students Diane Hodges and Aaron Bond conducted interviews at a secondary school site, and a team of UBC preservice teacher education students was contracted to code the survey data.

The Partners

The Richmond School District and Hewlett-Packard (Canada) were the principal partners in the GenTech project. Richmond SD provided extensive release time for teacher-training, learning resources and technical support. Hewlett Packard provided hardware, some software and technical expertise. The Banff Center for New Media supported the completion of extensive interviews and field-based observation, and as well contributed documentary and other informational resources necessary to profiling the organization and its equity intervention policies and practices. SCWIST provided interviews, documentary and other informational resources, orientation for graduate student researchers and access to meetings, educational activities and events for girls/women. The National Film Board (Studio D) similarly made available its extensive bank of documents, its media (film and video) archives and the expertise of its administrative and technical staffs.

International Aspects

• Mary Bryson and Suzanne de Castell were invited to the University of Auckland (August, 1997?) to provide a series of four lectures on the GenTech project. An Invited Public Lecture was also given at Waicato University, NZ.

   

• Faculty from the Chinese Women's University (Beijing) met at UBC with GenTech investigators (April, 1998) and have formally invited Bryson and de Castell to Beijing to provide public lectures at CWU, and consolidate plans for collaborative research on gender and technology that were initiated and elaborated during the Vancouver meeting.

   

• GenTech has been invited to send a delegate to the Experts Meeting on Gender. Science and Technology, Manila, 10-11 March, 1999. Attendance by Suzanne de Castell will be funded by the Office of International Development, Simon Fraser University. The purpose of this international meeting of experts working in the field of gender, science and technology, sponsored by the APEC Science and Technology working group, is to ascertain the nature and extent of existing gender-disaggregated data sources, and to devise policy designed to increase women's participation in S & T.

   

• Eleven presentations were delivered on the GenTech project at international conferences over the duration of this project.

Preservation of Data

Data from this research are preserved at the UBC GenTech office in two forms: original (e.g., tape-recorded interview) and machine-readable processed data (e.g., transcript of interview). All data are identifiable only by a code, with no names of individuals or schools.

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