A Girl's Gendered Engagement in Robot Designing and Building

• In Event: 64.030 - Engineering and Computer Science in K–12 Contexts

Abstract

As an interpretive case study, we attempt to explore how a 5-year-old girl performed and constructed her femininity in designing and building robots. Drawing on Bakhtin’s (1981) dialogism and appropriation, the findings showed that the girl performed her femininity by (a) appropriating gender scripts in designing and creating her robot which crossed the gender binary and (b) using gender tactics to position herself as a competent robot builder and to legitimize her entry into the masculine peer group while affirming her robot as an empowered agent. This study stresses the ideological complexity girls can experience as they enter STEM-related fields. Robot building can be a way for them to express their voices and gender identities.

Authors

• Sung Eun Jung, University of Arizona

• Kyung Hwa Lee, University of Georgia