Computer technology has been touted as a powerful tool to narrow the gap between rich and poor students. The 1997 President's panel on educational technology, part of the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology, concluded that "new computing and networking technologies have the potential to empower historically disadvantaged groups" that can "scarcely be overstated" (p. 67). Yet its report, among others, also cautions that computer technology alone will not advance social equity in education. As the Educational Testing Service observes, schools have invested millions of dollars to wire classrooms in advance of any deep understanding of "how technology is being used for and by different types of students" (AAUW Educational Foundation, 1998, p. 53).
The American Association of University Women (AAUW) Educational Foundation's Technology Commission, which convened for the first time in November 1998, is premised on the idea that gender must become a crucial feature of social equity concerns about technology in U.S. public schools. This is the first commission to specifically consider differences in the way girls and boys use computer-based technologies as well as classroom strategies to ensure equity. Cochaired by Sherry Turkle, professor of sociology at the Mass-achusetts Institute of Technology, and Patricia Diaz Dennis, an executive with SBC Communications, the foundation's 18-month commission is convening leading educators, researchers, and technology specialists to analyze trends, review research, and make policy recommendations in a comprehensive report in 1999.
The Alarming Technological Divide
A new report by the AAUW Educational Foundation, Gender Gaps: Where Schools Still Fail Our Children (1998), describes an alarming—and deepening—technological divide between girls and boys. Computer application courses in graphic arts and computer-aided design, although not common, attract very few girls. Girls are significantly more likely than boys to enroll in clerical and data-entry courses, the 1990s version of typing. In 1996, only 17 percent of high school students taking the rigorous advanced placement computer science exam were female—a statistic essentially unchanged from the previous year.
In addition to identifying the marketing of computer games to boys (and their placement in the "boys" aisle of toy stores), some research has found that computer materials for classrooms may exacerbate, rather than diminish, the gender imbalance around computers. A small but representative study of elementary mathematics software in 1995 found that in the 40 percent that had gender-identifiable characters, only 12 percent of the characters were female (Durham & Brownlow, 1997). Further, the study found that the material portrayed these female characters passively in the stereotypical roles of mother and princess. In stark contrast, male characters appeared as heavy equipment operators, factory workers, shopkeepers, mountain climbers, and hang glider pilots. The Internet is now attracting more women, a Harvard Educational Letter review notes, "but users of the newer, more powerful areas of the Net, like the World Wide Web, are still 85 percent men" (Tarlin, 1997, p. 20).
Researchers have discovered that attitudes toward computer technology, and perceived competency with it, differ by sex as well. Commission cochair Turkle (1986) has argued that "the computer becomes a personal and cultural symbol of what a woman is not." Girls face the choice, as Ellen Tarlin summarizes, of "putting themselves at odds either with the cultural associations of technology or with the cultural associations of being a woman" (1997, p. 20). Whereas boys describe computers as "enjoyable, special, friendly, and important," girls, as a population, do not use such inviting terms.
In a 1997 study of technology use in large suburban school systems (AAUW Educational Foundation, 1998), girls of all ethnicities consistently rated themselves significantly lower than boys on computer ability and were less likely than boys to think computers help them do better in school. The findings are consistent with earlier data: A metanalysis of 81 studies from 1973 to 1992 found that boys exhibited greater sex-role stereotyping of computer use and deeper confidence with technology (Whitley, 1997).
Computer Gaps, Job Gaps
Gender gaps in experience with and attitudes toward computer technology in K–12 classrooms reverberate into postsecondary education and the job market. The career paths projected to expand dramatically in the 21st century will require aptitude and fluency with technology—beyond word processing and data-entry tasks. An estimated 60 percent of jobs by the year 2000 will require skills with information technologies. These jobs are expected to pay a 10 to 15 percent premium over jobs that do not require them (McKinsey and Co., 1995).
Not all skilled, interesting, and better-paying positions drawing on computer expertise will require a B.A. Today, computer companies face such a shortage of tech talent that some have begun to recruit high school students (predominately male) with computer programming, graphics, and Web design skills.
Postsecondary education magnifies the gender gaps in computer science documented at the K–12 level. This is particularly startling because the computer science field has been open to college women since it began 25 years ago. "When the flood of computer science undergraduate students hit the universities from 1978 to 1985," C. Dianne Martin notes, "almost half were women" (1991, p. 10). U.S. Department of Education statistics demonstrate that this initial gender parity in enrollment has given way to skewed sex ratios in degrees conferred. In 1998, women held only 28 percent and 25 percent of computer science B.A. and M.A. degrees, respectively, and only 9 percent and 19 percent of B.A.s and M.A.s in engineering-related technologies.
Although the AAUW commission does not believe that public education should equip students to fulfill specific job needs, schooling should prepare all students to take advantage of economic opportunities and to participate fully and meaningfully in new communications media. Further, education should facilitate economic independence among historically disadvantaged groups. Even as other educational gender gaps shrink, girls must be equipped to take advantage of emerging trends in employment and technology.
Helping Girls Become "Power Users"
The problem of equity is not exclusively one of the underrepresentation of girls in technology classes, majors, and careers. The AAUW Educational Foundation's Technology Commission will continue to consider not only how many girls and women pursue these fields, but also how they use computer technology. Some research suggests that girls and boys may be using technology for different ends and in different ways. The President's Committee report observes that although high school girls made 50 percent greater use of the computer for word processing than their male classmates . . . they accounted for only 26 percent of all elective computer use before and after school, and for only 20 percent of all in-school computer-based game-playing activities. (P. 78)
The AAUW commission not only will explore how to boost enrollments in technology-related fields but also will seek to understand how girls and boys use computer technology in the learning process. Ideally, the foundation believes, all students should be achieving "efficacy" with technology—a sense of control over technology and a belief that they can use computer technology in meaningful ways. As commission member Cornelia Brunner of Education Development Center urges, girls must learn to be "power users," capable of generalizing "about human-computer interactions, and thus able to learn new programs on their own." Girls, she says, need to be invited to "think of themselves as potential designers of hardware and software rather than mere 'end users.'" (AAUW Educational Foundation, 1998, p. 55)
Computer Technology for What End?
Beyond students' own perceptions of their efficacy with computers looms a still larger question for the commission: What sort of learning environment is envisioned by those who seek to integrate computer technology into the public schools? What sort of learning styles, social values, roles, and identities does computer technology promote? Are these values consistent with gender equity? How might public schools use technology to achieve an equitable and rigorous education for all students?
Henry Jay Becker noted in his often-cited 1992 review of technology and education, for example, that schools used computers for rote learning through drill-and-practice routines, rather than for activities that would promote constructivist, higher-order learning. Further, Becker discovered that "brighter" students received more opportunities to use computers for higher-order problem solving, whereas students tracked into less rigorous classes more often encountered computers in the context of drill-and-practice routines. Although drill-and-practice computer use may impart facts and knowledge efficiently in the classroom, Frank Withrow, director of learning technologies for the Council of Chief State School Officers notes that the "world does not need 'knowers,' it needs 'learners'" (Becker, 1994).
The social and educational consequences of producing a culture stratified into learners and individuals who have minimal technical skills and minimal abilities to manipulate computer technology for higher-order thinking could be dire. "Many students become familiar with information technologies in a general sense," wrote Charles Piller in a 1992 report that describes a chilling technological dystopia: But those who cannot claim computers as their own tool for exploring the world never grasp the power of technology. Such students become passive consumers of electronic information. Once out of school, they are relegated to low-wage jobs where they may operate electronic cash registers or bar-code readers. They may catch on as data- entry clerks, typing page after page in deadly monotony. They are controlled by technology as adults—just as drill and practice routines controlled them as students. A substantial percentage of working women, in fact, currently inhabit the service sector of cashiers and data-entry clerks that Piller describes.
AAUW's technology commission does not assume that girls or boys have any inherent attitude toward technology. Still, research has documented gender differences in the kinds of uses and values that boys and girls imagine for technology. Turkle has identified two gender-specific visions of how computers should be integrated into learning and culture (1986). The risk-taking, or "transparent," style characterized by mastery and manipulation of the environment is a predominately "masculine" orientation. Turkle characterizes the relational, or "opaque," style that sees computers as a tool, or a means to an end, as a "feminine" orientation.
In their studies of how computer-savvy men and women describe their "perfect instruments" of the future, Cornelia Brunner and her colleagues confirm gender differences in the technological imagination (1998). Two "distinct and highly gendered perspectives emerged" concerning computers and culture, Brunner explained. Women imagined small flexible objects that "would allow us to integrate our personal and professional lives and to facilitate creativity and communication." In contrast, Brunner explains, "men's stories were about mind melds and bionic implants that allow their owners to create whole cities or to have instant access to the great minds in history." Where one male respondent described his perfect instrument as "a direct brain-to-machine link. Plug it into a socket in the back of your head and you can begin communications with it," a woman described an instrument "[that] would operate all day to day necessities to communicate and transport people . . . a fiber optic network, with no dangerous side effects" (p. 3).
AAUW's technology commission is not seeking ways to "fix" girls to conform them to prevailing views of computer technology and how it should be used in the classroom. As Brunner notes, "the themes of communication, collaboration, and integration—so central to women's interpretation of technology—have not played a central role in how we, as a society, choose to apply or envision technology." Brunner contends that we should find "ways in which technologies can support a new kind of learning that values and builds upon the diverse perspectives of all learners" (p. 5).
The commission will consider how computer technology can advance an equitable and challenging learning environment that does not delimit participation by gender or by other social variables, such as class. Such an environment will integrate the perspectives of all groups of learners and encourage students to undertake challenging work (Brunner, 1998).
Teachers Are the Linchpin
AAUW's technology commission will begin its work by focusing on teacher education, gender, and technology. Teachers are the linchpin in any discussion of how, or whether, computers will advance equitable and rigorous education. The President's Committee report warns that the substantial investment in hardware, infrastructure software, and content that is recommended . . . will largely be wasted if K–12 teachers are not provided with preparation and support they will need to effectively integrate information technologies into their teaching. (1997, p. 95)
As a predominately middle-aged, female population, teachers have been charged with a "technophobic" resistance to computers in the classroom. In many cases, however, teachers lack even the most basic training with computer technology and education. In 1997, researchers found that only 15 percent of teacher candidates nationwide had received at least nine hours of technology training. Further, the potential advantages or applications of technology in the classroom to promote learning are not entirely apparent to educators themselves (Education Week, 1997, p. 29). Jan Hawkins (1998) of the Education Development Center elaborates that teacher training tends to take the form of an introduction to the mechanics of the equipment, rather than how to incorporate it to do teaching jobs more effectively. There is seldom incentive to devote the energy needed to use technologies innovatively. . . . What exists generally focuses on teaching about the technology rather than teaching with it. . . . They need training to create classrooms that allow students to achieve the new standards.
Keeping these conditions in mind, the commission will consider how teacher education and technology might advance the goals of gender equity and a rigorous classroom environment. Teacher education and computer technology need to be aligned with other educational objectives. For the AAUW Educational Foundation, these goals are gender equity in the classroom and high standards for all students.
