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Observations of computing students on the homogeneity of their classrooms

Published: 28 May 2018 Publication History

Abstract

This paper aims to provide some insight into the experiences and challenges faced by a cohort of homogeneously male final year students in a third level computing degree programme. It looks at their perceptions of how this homogeneity impacts them. Despite a large volume of research into the gender imbalance in STEM, studies of the male perspective have largely been absent from the literature.
The study originally intended to examine their perceptions on how the gender imbalance impacted their education. However, the resulting research gave voice to a number of concerns. This work focuses on the concerns surrounding the industry they are entering, as well as potential outcomes of the imbalanced learning environment. This work in particular seeks to look at how the normative masculinity experienced by the students in third level that could be seen to disadvantage or hurt women also constrains the men experiencing them.

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cover image ACM Conferences
GE '18: Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Gender Equality in Software Engineering
May 2018
62 pages
ISBN:9781450357388
DOI:10.1145/3195570
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Published: 28 May 2018

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Author Tags

  1. computer science
  2. education
  3. experiential research
  4. gender
  5. social inclusion

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