Counter-Stereotypes, Collaboration, and Context: Making Computer Science More Appealing to Girls

Abstract

Women are underrepresented in Computer Science (CS) and related fields. Having a better gender representation of society in CS contributes to including diverse perspectives on how we shape a field that profoundly impacts society. More women in CS also results in more people filling the high number of CS vacancies, more opportunities for women to become financially independent, more innovations, and reduced biases in technology.

Girls and women who decide to not pursue a CS career do so at different ages and for various reasons. These reasons include low self-efficacy, lack of interest development, and stereotypes. However, there are still gaps and contradictions in the literature, including, but not limited to, the lack of quantitative research on the stereotypes and interests in a CS career among (young) children within Europe. Moreover, little is known about the gender inclusivity of CS educational resources, such as books and programming tools, for children attending primary and secondary education.

This thesis focuses on programming education and girls in primary and secondary schools. We aim to gain insights into children's images of computer scientists and the characteristics of children interested in a CS career within the Netherlands. Moreover, we aim to gain insights into whether current CS educational resources contribute to creating equal opportunities for children of all genders.

To gain insights into CS stereotypes, we conducted a quantitative study in a Dutch science museum. We collected data on children's beliefs regarding a computer scientist's gender, social skills and interests. We measured children's implicit, or unconscious, stereotypes with Implicit Association Tests. We found that our participants implicitly believe that computer scientists are social and have an interest in video gaming. Through Likert scale questions, we found that our participants have the explicit, or conscious, belief that computer scientists are male, social and have an interest in video gaming. In this study, we also included an experiment; part of the participants watched a video of either a man or woman explaining what a computer scientist does. The intervention had few significant effects. An exception is participants explicitly indicating computer scientists as more social after watching the video.

To gain insights into CS career interests, we studied whether children at a Dutch science museum have an interest in becoming computer scientists through self-reported questions. On average, participants had a low interest in a CS career. We found a higher interest in a CS career in boys, children who are interested in computers or video gaming, children who gained programming experience at home or at an out-of-school activity, and children who believe that programmers are social. Moreover, girls who believe that a CS career is for girls had a higher CS career interest than girls who don't have this belief.

To gain insights into CS educational resources, we analysed the characters illustrated in ten programming books for children. We analysed gender, occurrence with others, and interests. Except for one book, they all contain more masculine than feminine characters. The majority of the books have at least half of their characters illustrated alone. Only 15% of the characters illustrated have an identifiable interest in computers and robots. Over two-thirds of the characters fit at least one stereotypical trait.

Additionally, we explored project type preferences and behaviour in the programming language Hedy. We analysed programs in the context of story, game and visual assignments. We found that all children worked most on the game assignments, independently of their gender. We identified gender differences in the length and number of (unique) commands used in the Hedy programs. Most of the differences occurred in the more elaborate assignments.

Within this thesis, we used different methods to research stereotypes, career orientation, educational materials and programming languages.
Based on our work, we suggest that CS education ensures the encounter of counter-stereotypes on multiple occasions, stimulates collaborative learning and uses a context that sparks interest in a diverse group of students. Our results and implications contribute to enabling equitable learning opportunities in CS for all children. In this way, we can make Computer Science more appealing to girls.