Spaces for change: Gender and technology access in collaborative software design projects

Equitable computer collaborations in mixed-gender teams have been a pressing issue for many years. While some have argued for creating single-gender teams or girls-only computer activities, our approach was different. The current study examines a three-month software design activity in which mixed teams of girls and boys (10±12 year olds) designed and implemented multimedia astronomy resources for younger students. In this context we assessed gender differences in students ' levels of access to technology and how these participa-tion patterns changed throughout the project duration. We found through our qualitative analyses that the con®guration of social, physical and cognitive ``spaces' ' in the project environment contributed to a positive change in girls ' levels of access. We discuss the implications of these results in regard to issues surrounding the development and maintenance of gender equity in computer use and further research. KEY WORDS: Gender equity; technological ¯uency; learning through design. As recent research has shown, the road toward becoming technologically literate and scienti®cally competent has been a ``leaking pipeline' ' for girls and women in particular, from the elementary schools where girls feel disenfranchised in science and technology, to universities where fewer female students choose science and engineering majors (Camp, 1997). A variety of explanations have been offered for this trend, ranging from different attitudes toward computers (Shashaani, 1994) and different levels of participation in computer and science courses (Chen, 1985; Linn, 1985), to cultural and so-cial conditions found in the respective domain