Yes, There’s a Problem (But Not) Here: Some Facts of Disparate Participation in Undergraduate Computer Science

• In Event: 3520 - Section on Race, Gender, and Class Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 4. Education

Abstract

Despite increasing attention, the existence of gender inequality in STEM education and STEM professions remains an integral part of the status quo. This manuscript reports on interventions to incorporate professional morality and ethics into undergraduate Computer Science (CS) education, and associated research parallel to these interventions, as a part of an NSF funded project to ‘revolutionize’ CS education. Here we focus on findings of a set of repeated interviews with undergraduate CS students following an introductory ‘Foundational Values’ course centered around the topics of social justice and ethics.

This research provides evidence that a high proportion of students acknowledge the personal and professional value of ensuring diversity, inclusion, and social justice in CS education and professional practice. They are also able to successfully identify root causes of inequality, bias, and social injustices in CS contexts. However CS students demonstrate a social darwinist ideology that hinges on meritocratic fallacies as a consequence of the normalized white male dominance of the field that feeds off of homophilous peer network formations. They will commonly deflect or deny the existence of gender-based and other biases and sex-based gaps in capacity or initiative by referencing popular tropes including oblique references to what is right and wrong or through varying suggestions that diversity is not a problematic issue around them.

Authors

• Michelle Fretwell, Boise State University

• Erika Abbott, Boise State University

• Noah Salzman, Boise State University

• Donald J. Winiecki, Boise State University