Female Under-Representation in Computing Education and Industry - A Survey of Issues and Interventions

This survey paper examines the issue of female under-representation in computing education and industry, which has been shown from empirical studies to be a problem for over two decades. While various measures and intervention strategies have been implemented to increase the interest of girls in computing education and industry, the level of success has been discouraging. The primary contribution of this paper is to provide an analysis of the extensive research work in this area. It outlines the progressive decline in female representation in computing education. It also presents the key arguments that attempt to explain the decline and intervention strategies. We conclude that there is a need to further explore strategies that will encourage young female learners to interact more with computer educational games

Getting to know Pepper : Effects of people’s awareness of a robot’s capabilities on their trust in the robot

© 2018 Association for Computing MachineryThis work investigates how human awareness about a social robot’s capabilities is related to trusting this robot to handle different tasks. We present a user study that relates knowledge on different quality levels to participant’s ratings of trust. Secondary school pupils were asked to rate their trust in the robot after three types of exposures: a video demonstration, a live interaction, and a programming task. The study revealed that the pupils’ trust is positively affected across different domains after each session, indicating that human users trust a robot more the more awareness about the robot they have

Teaching staff knowledge, attributions and confidence in relation to working with children with an intellectual disability and challenging behaviour

The present study examined Scottish teaching staff knowledge about the definition and management of challenging behaviour displayed by children with an intellectual disability. Knowledge levels were relatively low, and participants were most likely to define challenging behaviour by function or topography. Teaching staff were largely unaware of positive programming strategies, suggesting that they may not be properly equipped to manage challenging behaviour effectively in the longer term. The teaching staff were found to hold attributions which research suggests are associated with reduced helping behaviour and increased anger. This indicates a continuing need to identify effective ways of promoting more accurate knowledge and positive attributions in teaching staff

Dual Language and ENL Comprehension: A First Grade Study for Students at Risk for Delayed English Language Development

This research began by asking how dual language programming impacts English comprehension for ENL students. Research was conducted within one first grade dual language cohort with five bilingual students. The data was collected by interviewing teachers and students, utilizing historical comprehension data, observing read alouds, and assessing student comprehension. Findings revealed that comprehension in a participant’s first language was positively related to English comprehension. However, individual student differences impacted the extent of the correlation. Furthermore, dual language teachers implemented common instructional practices to scaffold ENL student comprehension. Therefore, the data implied that native language instruction is integral, student backgrounds and differences need to be analyzed, and dual language educators need adequate professional development to best aid ENL comprehension

The abstraction transition taxonomy: developing desired learning outcomes through the lens of situated cognition

We report on a post-hoc analysis of introductory programming lecture materials. The purpose of this analysis is to identify what knowledge and skills we are asking students to acquire, as situated in the activity, tools, and culture of what programmers do and how they think. The specific materials analyzed are the 133 Peer Instruction questions used in lecture to support cognitive apprenticeship -- honoring the situated nature of knowledge. We propose an Abstraction Transition Taxonomy for classifying the kinds of knowing and practices we engage students in as we seek to apprentice them into the programming world. We find students are asked to answer questions expressed using three levels of abstraction: English, CS Speak, and Code. Moreover, many questions involve asking students to transition between levels of abstraction within the context of a computational problem. Finally, by applying our taxonomy in classifying a range of introductory programming exams, we find that summative assessments (including our own) tend to emphasize a small range of the skills fostered in students during the formative/apprenticeship phase