‘If my close people succeeded, then I will succeed too’: a qualitative insight into self-efficacy beliefs of women studying IT

• In Event: Reforming Higher Education Systems in Southeast Asia: Cooperation, Capacity, and Equity

Proposal

Globally women’s participation in STEM education and employment not only faces low levels, but also experiences a notably high attrition rate, often described as a “leaky pipeline”. Information Technology (IT) is a rapidly developing STEM field, and in response to the increasing demand and interest in IT education, in recent years, Kazakhstan has substantially increased the allocation of educational grants to this sector. However, according to the Bureau of National Statistics for the years 2022-2023, a pronounced gender gap persists in IT education in the country, with women comprising only a quarter of students enrolled in undergraduate IT programs. A growing body of research has shown that motivation to engage in STEM activities is often linked to STEM self-efficacy beliefs, - or the beliefs in one’s abilities to complete STEM-related tasks (Lent et al., 2018; Yu & Jen, 2021). Yet, girls and women often hold lower STEM self-efficacy beliefs compared to boys and men (Robnett & Thoman, 2017; Webb-Williams, 2017). The proposed study aims to explore self-efficacy of undergraduate women studying IT and uses Bandura’s self-efficacy framework to explore school and university experiences of thirty undergraduate women studying IT majors in Kazakhstan. The study was guided by the following research question: What experiences of Kazakhstani undergraduate women in IT contributed to women’s self-efficacy and perseverance moving through the pipeline?

Bandura (1977, 1997) recognized four major sources of self-efficacy: (a) mastery experiences, (b) social persuasion, (c) vicarious experiences, and (d) emotional and physiological states. Mastery experiences, or past successes, are considered to have the most powerful impact on self-efficacy beliefs as past experiences “provide the most authentic evidence of whether one can master whatever it takes to succeed” (Bandura, 1997). Social persuasion includes encouragement, discouragement, positive or negative feedback from parents, teachers, faculty, peers or other figures. Vicarious experiences refer to observing similar others such as role models, peers or family members similar to oneself to gauge one’s own self-efficacy based on the achievements and experiences of these similar others. Vicarious experiences are often particularly important for individuals holding minoritized identities, including women in male-dominated professions such as STEM (Martin et al., 2014; Webb-Williams, 2017). Finally, emotional and physiological states, such as for example anxiety or feeling sick, are considered to affect self-efficacy in situational circumstances. Although both men and women in Computing and Engineering graduate programs recognize the positive impact of past successes and positive social persuasion on self-efficacy beliefs, women report past successes and positive social persuasion less often compared to men (Brown et al., 2023). Similarly, the study investigating gender differences in the sources of self-efficacy of undergraduate Engineering program found that men more often report mastery experiences as their source of self-efficacy, whereas women report vicarious experience and social persuasion (Chen et al., 2023).

Methodology. The study employed Smith’s interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to better capture participants’ lived experiences (Smith, Flowers, & larkin, 2009). The final sample included 30 undergraduate women majoring in IT in five English-medium universities in two major cities in the country (Astana and Almaty). The research sites, - universities that had Computer Science departments, - were selected based on the convenience sampling strategy. Slightly more than half of the participants were in their second year of undergraduate studies (n=16), for many of whom the undergraduate programs consisted of three years. The rest of the participants were either in their third (n=8) or fourth year of studies (n=6). Most participants involved in the study majored in Information Systems (n=11), Computer Science (n=7), Cybersecurity (n=5), and Software Engineering (n=4). The rest three participants majored in Data Engineering (n=1), Smart Technologies (n=1) and Computer Systems (n=1).
Qualitative data was collected through individual semi-structured interviews which lasted approximately 30-40 minutes. The interview protocol was compiled based on the review of the existing literature and covered most of the topics identified as important in Ecological framework of factors influencing girls’ and women’s participation, achievement and progression in STEM studies (UNESCO, 2017). Using NVivo, the transcribed data was analyzed following the six stages of thematic analysis: getting acquainted with the data, creating initial codes, looking for themes, revising the themes, determining and labelling themes, generating a report (Braun & Clarke, 2006).

Results. Past successes that students experienced during school years and early years at the university was the most frequently mentioned theme for the participants, and was often mentioned by the women as boosts of confidence. This finding supports existing literature stating that mastery experiences serve as the most powerful of the four self-efficacy sources (Bandura, 1997; Chen et al., 2022). Social persuasion, especially, in the form of parents’ and teachers’ encouragement and support, similarly, were often linked to the increases in self-efficacy and the decision to study an IT major. Parents, siblings, other family members, role models in social networking sites and peers in the IT or STEM fields served as positive vicarious experiences and were reported by the participants to contribute to their positive self-efficacy beliefs.
The findings with regards to vicarious experiences also provide interesting implications for the importance of girls-only hackathons and IT competitions for female students’ engagement in IT. The analysis showed that hackathons and IT competitions only for girls, especially for the girls with little experience in IT, might be a powerful tool to increase the engagement of women in IT. Several participants reported that hackathons and IT competitions conducted exclusively for female students appealed to them, whereas other hackathons and competitions felt intimidating since the winners for these competitions were often men and boys. Participation in, and particularly winning girls-only IT competitions or hackathons were also mentioned by the interviewees as important past successes that contributed to their decision to engage in IT activities. Thus, drawing on vicarious experiences, such competitions have the potential to attract more women to engage in IT-related activities providing more opportunities for mastery experiences. As a result, participation in these hackathons and IT competitions have a potential of boosting women’s self-efficacy through the most powerful source of self-efficacy, mastery experiences.

Author

• Alexandra Nam, Astana IT University