Broadening Youth Participation in Computer Science & Engineering

Back to Primers

Authors: Judi Fusco & Patricia Schank
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Overview

Educators, companies, and governments around the world share the desire to support and engage underrepresented groups in science and engineering. Some programs have had success in the goal of increasing the interest and engagement of underrepresented groups in engineering and STEM. Many of these developed curriculum, intensive teacher training, student competitions, and other practices––such as providing mentors and same-gender/race role models, and using real motivating problems in the students’ community––to engage underrepresented groups in engineering and design. In general, the most successful programs that have an impact on underrepresented groups are those that have role models that youth can identify with, and that develop appropriate situational, culturally relevant interactions with target youth (McGill, Decker, & Settle, 2015).

Still, large disparities persist in innovation rates by socioeconomic class, race, and gender––and the gap is not explained by innate ability (e.g., early childhood test scores; Bell et al., 2017). Consider the College Board’s Advanced Placement Program, which is one gateway to the STEM career pathway. While the number of high school students taking the AP Computer Science exam has been increasing annually, and the number of exam takers in 2016 rose 17%, female, Latinx, and African American participation remains low; just 23% of exam takers were female, 11.5% were Latinx, and 3.7% were African American (Ericson, 2017; Hinton, 2016). In 8 states, fewer than 10 girls took the exam, and in 2 states, no girls took the exam. And even when women, girls, and minorities enter a STEM career pathway, they leave at a higher rate––at multiple points––from middle school to community college to even tenured faculty in STEM (Burke & Mattis, 2007; Griffith, 2010). Margolis & Fischer (2003) interviewed women who were dropping out of computer science in college and found that professors favored men who had more experience in CS. From a social justice perspective (Bienkowski, 2018), even when anyone can take advantage of an opportunity (equality), not everyone comes to that opportunity prepared in the same way or experiences that opportunity the same way (equity).

Why worry about diversity in computing and engineering? Disparity in opportunity is not fair to individuals, economically and educationally, and society needs everyone’s perspectives and contributions to solve important problems. Inclusion is critical for innovation: diversity increases innovation (e.g., patents), partly because a variety of perspectives lead to new ideas, earlier identification of problems, and more effective science (Forbes Insights, 2011; Medin & Bang, 2014; Bienkowski, 2018). Bell and colleagues (2017) argue that if women, minorities, and children from low-income families were to invent at the same rate as white men from high-income families, the rate of innovation in America would quadruple; “There are many “lost Einsteins” – people who would have had highly impactful inventions had they been exposed to careers in innovation as children” (p. 1)––and had they been given continued opportunities, role models, mentors, and other support provided to those who are already highly rewarded.

Advancing educational, economic, and innovative opportunity requires special attention to issues that prevent equitable participation (Blikstein, 2018). Governments and funding agencies have responded with several initiatives––including NSF’s CS4All and STEM+C programs. Expanding access to computer science has been announced as a priority by 40 states (Code.org, 2017), 27 states have enacted computer science curricula for their K-12 public schools, and 13 more are in the process of developing statewide CS standards (Blikstein, 2018).

This primer reviews practices from selected work that that has helped broaden youth participation in computer science and engineering (see Key Lessons). These practices were drawn from the literature and from a review of selected successful programs (see Projects). We also discuss deeper issues of identity, interest, and self-efficacy that can hold youth back, and ways to impact youth interest and desire to pursue STEM and engineering careers.

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