Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

1.11.12 | Two recent stories illuminate the benefits of after-school programs for girls that encourage interest in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and math).

Nora Fleming of Education Week and Tina Barseghian of Mind/Shift both take a closer look at Techbridge, which was founded more than a decade ago by Chabot Space & Science Center as a small after-school program. It currently serves more than 600 girls in the California Bay Area with hands-on projects that encourage problem-solving and skill-building.

National funders have scaled Techbridge’s programs, expanding its overall reach to 10,000 girls to date. One avenue has been through Girl Scout Councils, which use Girls Go Techbridge programs-in-a-box (read more about the Girl Scouts geeking out). Here’s a sample curriculum.

Education Week also looks at other initiatives, including the California STEM Learning Network, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to improve STEM education and encourage more students to pursue STEM careers. A Department of Commerce report released in 2010 shows that women hold less than 25 percent of STEM-related jobs even though they make up almost half the workforce. The low number of women in tech fields has been stubbornly persistent, and educators are focusing more on boosting young girls’ confidence through early experience and teamwork. From Education Week:

According to Techbridge Executive Director Linda Kekelis, the statistics on who pursues STEM careers has more to do with conditioning than predisposition. With the right curriculum and right environment, she said, it’s possible to change a student’s mind.

“Girls and boys, it’s not that they are so different. Their experiences, however, can be very different, which leads to different interests and career trajectories,” she said. “Techbridge is providing the expectations and the experiences to level the playing field for girls, particularly in STEM.”

Making STEM lessons relevant to students’ lives is a key focus:

Techbridge has also sought to stimulate student excitement, especially for students who were turned off or misinformed about STEM. To design its curriculum, Techbridge asked girls, as well as teachers and parents, what would appeal to them. They then took their core ideas—like taking things apart and wondering how they work or understanding how STEM could “make the world a better place”—and incorporated them into lessons.

Role models, student leadership, and teamwork are also critical, Techbridge has found, to encourage girls. Program participants meet female professionals who work in STEM fields and take field trips to see them in action at companies like Apple, Facebook, or eBay.

The point about role models and teamwork echos what older female students and women working in STEM fields have said. For male students, individual accomplishments may be enough to spur or sustain interest, but girls are more often looking for a broader purpose and community.

“Girls Go Geek ... Again!”, a Fog Creek Software blog post that Anna Lewis wrote last summer on the history of women in computer science, features a Q&A with Leah Hanson, a computer science major at Johns Hopkins University and Fog Creek intern. When I first read the interview, I thought Hanson’s insights on recruitment were particularly notable:

Q: As you know, Fog Creek would like to attract and hire more developers who are women. Is there anything you’d recommend we do in our recruiting process to attract more women?

Leah: Well, one thing I noticed is that on your website you really stress how the developers here are the best and all the perks that you offer. But, to be honest, that doesn’t really differentiate Fog Creek from Google or Facebook because they also have awesome developers and loads of perks. Whereas what I think your internship offers that you don’t stress quite as much is all the close mentorship we get. Here, we’re a trusted part of the team. It’s our call to try things when we’re developing new features. We get to be a part of actual decisions about the code that ships. And every line of code gets reviewed and tested, whereas at school your code only gets checked to see if it actually works. Here, every time my code gets reviewed, it helps build my confidence that what we ship will be good. I also learn a lot about coding style and best practices based on what they want me to change. I don’t think that interns at larger companies get to work so closely with mentors or are as included as part of the team. And, basically, these things that have to do with collaboration and learning appeal a lot more to female candidates than talking about the best developers in the world or all the perks.

I went to a talk at Johns Hopkins, hosted by our Women in CS group, by Hanna Wallach on gender imbalance among FLOSS developers. And she said that one of the things that happens is that women don’t even think they’re qualified for something because it’s advertised in competitive language. The language of competition not only doesn’t appeal to many women, it actually puts them off. Google advertises their Summer of Code with very competitive language. In 2006, GNOME received almost two hundred GSoC applicants – all male. When GNOME advertised an identical program for women, but emphasizing the opportunities for mentorship and learning, they received over a hundred highly qualified female applicants for the three spots they were able to fund. Honestly, when you hear the phrase “the world’s best developers,” you see a guy. And, for women, that can be alienating.

Tina Barseghian posted a follow-up this week to her Techbridge story, noting that some of her readers took issue with the notion that girls need an extra push when it comes to STEM courses. That prompted a thoughtful analysis of stereotypes and abilities of both sexes:

According to Claude Steele, author of Whistling Vivaldi and Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us, it’s not that girls aren’t necessarily interested in science and math, it’s whether they’re discouraged from following their interests because of the persistent stereotype that girls aren’t good at that sort of thing.

“The idea of the ‘gift-that-girls-don’t-have’ is likely to be a key part of what’s keeping them from pursuing those careers.”

Steele has examined this very phenomenon closely for years and has identified it as a stereotype threat. The issue is much more complex than the very basic tendencies of what naturally interests either gender. Steele pinpoints the problem to what happens after girls follow their interests in science and math studies, when inevitable obstacles come up.

“When you perform in science and math… in the larger society you’re stereotyped as not being good at it,” Steele says of girls. “You experience a little frustration, you say, ‘Am I confirming that stereotype and am I going to be seen to confirm that stereotype? Am I going to have to live under this pressure for the rest of my life if I choose this as a career?’ So there’s a pressure coming just from those stereotypes that discourages women from engaging in those fields and, and staying in those fields even when their skills and abilities are A-plus. So that’s an extra burden.”

Plus: Understanding the subtle differences in messages given to boys and girls is part of what teachers learn at the Educators’ Equity STEM Academy. A small number of community college professors in Maryland are currently taking part in the program, which is designed to show how small changes in the classroom—such as calling on girls more often—can improve academic performance. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the three-year program will eventually expand to high school teachers and other community college teachers educators, reports The Baltimore Sun.

“We’re really focusing on the little messages, the implicit messages that add up over time,” Tara Ebersole, a biology professor and STEM liaison for the Community College of Baltimore County, told the Sun.