Preparing women for dead-end jobs? Vocational education and training (VET) for information and communication technology (ICT) jobs

This paper discusses the role that vocational education and training (VET) in ICT subject areas plays in contributing to the gender and social class structuring of ICT occupations, focusing in particular on education and employment data from the UK. The paper also makes reference to similar data about ICT VET in Germany and Japan to argue that the new areas of ‘soft’ ICT skills – in education and in occupations - have become feminised, and channel women into low skilled and low paid work. Unlike university level ICT education, which has opened opportunities for women and students coming from families with no experience of higher education, sub-degree level ICT VET seems to be continuing to reproduce gender and socio- economic class within and through ICT occupations. I argue that those concerned with gender equity research and interventions in ICT need to work with an analysis that disaggregates what are now appearing to be quite different skills sets, and different career opportunities often misleadingly conflated under the umbrella term ‘ICT’. I also argue for better analytical models for the gendering of ICT than those offered by the ‘leaky pipeline’ or ‘critical mass’ models, and for new analyses that would incorporate both a structural analysis and new ways of looking at women’s choices, such as Hakim’s ‘orientation to work’

ICT as a tool for enhancing women’s education opportunities: and new educational and professional opportunities for women in new technologies

The paper was prepared at the request of the UN Division for the Advancement of Women. It is a discussion paper for the Expert Group meeting on ICT and their impact and use as a tool for the advancement and empowerment of women in Seoul Korea 9-15th Nov 2002. The paper attempts separate the issues of ICT education as training for work in ICT professions and occupations, and ICT use for general education at all levels. It reviews recommendations made by other bodies and advises the EGM that it needs to adopt a more systemic understanding of the operations of gender and ICTs for any new, more effective recommendation

Vocational education and training (VET) for ICT employment: preparing women for work

This paper attempts to articulate the problematic issues that contribute to women’s participation or lack of it in ICT technical and vocational education and training (VET ). This is the training and education that prepares women for employment in IT jobs, or helps re-skill or up-skill them once they are employed. The paper has three sections. The maps out what is encompassed by the category (technical and) vocational education and training (VET), to give some idea of the context and institutions in which the specific activity of ICT VET takes place, focusing on non-university institutions. The second section reviews data about women’s participation in ICT VET from four countries and one large commercial training provider in order to explore whether different educational systems and contexts produce differences in women’s participation in ICT VET. The third and final section of the paper explores the main factors that contribute to differences in women’s participation. It also raises questions about whether those active in initiatives for women in ICT training are using the best categories to understand the nature of women’s engagement in ICTs, or whether it would be more useful for gender equity to reconceptualise the nature of ICT work and skills

Combining feminist pedagogy and transactional distance to create gender-sensitive technology-enhanced learning

In this paper, we argue for a new synthesis of two pedagogic theories: feminist pedagogy and transactional distance, which explain why and how distance education has been such a positive system for women in a national distance learning university. We illustrate this with examples of positive action initiatives for women. The concept of transactional distance allows us to explore distance as a form of psychological and communication space, not simply of geographical distance. Feminist pedagogy, on the other hand, has recognised the importance of gender in structuring disciplines as well as teaching strategies. Both theories implicitly position the face-to-face classroom as the ideal learning environment, with the implication that distance learning has to produce a deficient environment. We argue that the evidence for women does not support this and present examples of feminist distance learning provision that has offered successful technology-enhanced learning and educational opportunities

Academic blogging, academic practice and academic identity

This paper describes a small-scale study which investigates the role of blogging in professional academic practice in higher education. It draws on interviews with a sample of academics (scholars, researchers and teachers) who have blogs and on the author's own reflections on blogging to investigate the function of blogging in academic practice and its contribution to academic identity. It argues that blogging offers the potential of a new genre of accessible academic production which could contribute to the creation of a new twenty-first century academic identity with more involvement as a public intellectual

Exploring students' understanding of how blogs and blogging can support distance learning in Higher Education

We focus on exploring students' understanding of how blogs and blogging can support distance learning in Higher Education. We report on the findings from a survey of 795 distance learners at the UK Open University, and interviews with course designers whose courses utilise blogs. Despite enthusiasm from educators, the survey revealed that students are not enthusiastic about the potential for blogging activities to be built into their courses. Analysis of students' open-ended comments revealed that some students have positive expectations about blogging facilitating the sharing of material and ideas, for example, whilst the majority expressed concerns about subjectivity. We also discuss some empirically derived guidelines that we have generated that will enable educators to provide the appropriate scaffolds so that students can appropriate blogging tools for their own individual learning needs

Distance travelled: supporting women returning to STEM careers

This poster will illustrate how an innovative distance learning model has been used to support women returning to STEM after a career break and suggest ways that this might be taken forward into a wider STEM Employability agenda. Between 2005 and 2011 the Open University ran an online module to support women scientists, engineers and technologists returning after a career break. The background to the initiative was the UK government concerns about the large numbers of women with high level qualifications in SET subjects who did not return to the sector after taking time out. The course was aimed at those returning to all fields of Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) and has been studied by a total of nearly 1000 participants from across the UK and Ireland. The project has been innovative in delivery, in scope and in partnership and has used e-learning technologies to enhance social presence and networking between participants such as e-portfolios, online forums, virtual world environments and latterly collaborative wikis. Current ongoing evaluation (funded via the Open University’s eSTEeM programme) is looking at the long term impact and outcomes for participants and will be used to inform and shape new approaches to Employability and CPD within the STEM curriculum area

Information and communications technologies (ICT) in Higher Education teaching – a tale of gradualism rather than revolution

The widespread adoption of information and communications technologies (ICT) in higher education (HE) since the mid 1990s has failed to produce the radical changes in learning and teaching than many anticipated. Activity theory and Rogers’ model of the adoption of innovations provide analytic frameworks that help develop our understanding of the actual impact of ICT upon teaching practices. This paper draws on a series of large-scale surveys carried out over a 10 year period with distance education tutors at the UK Open University to explore the changing role of ICT in the work of teachers. It investigates how HE teachers in one large distance learning university have, over time, appropriated ICT applications as teaching tools, and the gradual rather than revolutionary changes that have resulted