Women and Non-traditional Disciplines

 

     
 

BACKGROUND

 
 

 
  Previous Research  
  Between 1995 and 1998 research in women in Computing Science was undertaken.  
 
Female students were strongly under represented in courses offered by the School of Computing at Curtin University of Technology. Recruitment of female students becomes an issue not only under equity concerns, but because retention within the School was higher than recruitment numbers warranted.
 
 

In order to gain an insight into the background of a successful female computing student, at the end of 1997 a pilot project was undertaken through the Building Educational Diversity in Engineering and Science (BEDES) funding at Curtin. This produced a preliminary profile of the virtual undergraduate student. At the commencement of the 1998 academic year first semester, first year students were surveyed in order to capture characteristics of female students at recruitment. Information obtained should enable efforts to focus on both attracting an increasing number of like females, and on making the course more appealing to other females.

This work led to several publications.

  
     

 

Between 1998 and 2005, research in the School of Engineering at Murdoch University was undertaken to examine learning issues confronting engineering students, with an emphasis on learning styles and teaching methods rather than on student assessment.
Although women are much more likely to choose a career in engineering than 20 or 30 years ago the numbers of practicing female engineers is small: there is clearly the need for a change in culture to address the gender imbalance in engineering [1].
These facts encouraged us to include gender issues in this study with the aim of addressing some
of the questions surrounding women in non–traditional areas:

  • Why are women not attracted to Engineering in greater numbers?
  • How can we attract more females into our courses?
  • How can we retain the female students on our courses?
  • How can we provide a meaningful and appropriate learning environment for all our students
    including females?
  

One approach was to examine gender differences in the learning styles of our students (and the teaching styles of our staff), and to examine initiatives within the School to deal with these differences. Questions investigated included

  • How is knowledge constructed and is this process dependant upon learning style?
  • Are there gender differences in learning styles and does this affect the construction of
    knowledge?
  • Can students having an understanding of their learning styles, construct knowledge more
    effectively in a learning environment contrary to their individual style?
  • Do software packages, and in particular CASE tool software, allow for different learners, with different learning styles, to construct the knowledge necessary to use the package?
  • Does the way the teacher presents a software package impact on the student learning process?
  

This research is part of our development of an online learning methodology, whereby learner characteristics can be used to establish an environment to support the construction of knowledge in students. In particular, it allows for any gender differences to be identified and thereby addressed, thus enabling all out students to get the maximum benefit from their learning experience at university and also aid them once they have started work in industry where there is less formal educational support.
  

A number of publications resulted from this work.  
     
  Unfortunately, despite a number of affirmative action projects, the situation for women undertaking careers in non-traditional disciplines has not changes significantly. Current research is in the the discipline of IT, where the lack of women in the profession is a constant lament. The changing nature of IT means that strategies to entice women into the discipline (and keep them there), need to also be changing rapidly.  
 

Current work in this area is being undertaken through supervision of PhD projects and as a component of both learning/teaching research and software development teamwork research.

As a tangent to this work the empowerment of women through ICT is also being investigated.

Note that since this is ongoing research, anything and everything may change here!

  
     
 

Current Students

 
 

Sam Downes (PhD) - Sam is looking at high school girls' perception of IT. She hopes to investigate the following questions:

  • How have students' perceptions of Information Technology changed with the increasing prevalence of IT?
  • Why have any changes in perception (if they exist) not translated into an increased number of females in Information Technology?
    As part of her research she hopes to gain some insight into the following:

    • What are West Australian high school students' perceptions of Information Technology?
    • Are these perceptions different for males and females?
    • Are these perceptions different for students from the city and the country?
    • How are these perceptions the same as in previous years?
    • How are these perceptions different to previous years?
    • What are the new barriers to students considering a career in IT?
    • Are these different for males and females?
    • Are these different for students from the city and the country?
    • How are these the same as in previous years?
    • How are these different to previous years?
 
 

Zebunnessa Laizu (PhD) - Laizu is examining the role of ICT in changing the social and cultural behaviour towards females in rural areas, whether it is helping them to build their capacity to utilise their own potential, and to gain information on various social issues. The context for this research is Bangladesh, the world’s most densely populated country, but also the least developed country in which more than 45% people live under the poverty level. Females are the poorest of the poor because of the extreme forms of discrimination that persist. 

Laizu hopes to observe and interview community organisers of Government organisations, NGOs, field workers, community members (men and women) in order to identify:

  • the information that needs to be delivered to the community for empowering women
  • the information gap among the organisations present in this area
  • the best path of information flow between the information hub and the community
  • the challenges of implementation etc