Abstract
Decades of research on engagement, retention, and under-representation in STEM conclude that a better understanding of learner development as a long-term, social process is needed. Social identity theory is increasingly used to understand the interplay between individual development and social structure. The present report summarises findings from a longitudinal study that followed computing students from the beginning of their university studies over a 3-year period (23 participants in year 1, 18 participants in year 3). The aim has been to explore the students’ relationship to their field of study and how it changes as the students engage in their studies. Interviews were conducted in which the students reflected on their interests and experiences with CS/IT prior to and during their studies, as well as on their future career. Informed by social identity theory, the focus has been to analyse and describe students’ experiences of participation in their field of study, i.e. doing, thinking, and feeling, in relation to CS/IT, negotiated among different people, and to discuss learner trajectories based on the insights into participation. A phenomenographic analysis yields an outcome space that describes different ways in which the students experience participation in CS/IT. Three ways of experiencing participation are particularly relevant to understand learner trajectories, participation as creating digital artefacts, problem-solving, and problem-solving for others. Participation as creating and (technical) problem-solving appear to be central at the university, which encourages trajectories towards being a computing person that enjoys creating digital artefacts and (technical) problem-solving. Students who have an interest in computing beyond the technical, e.g. social aspects, get little support. They risk being questioned by people who position computing as technical and theoretical and as a discipline that requires being objective.
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Notes
- 1.
The names are not the students’ real names. In order to protect anonymity of the very few female students in the study, I am using names that I found to be gender neutral and only male pronouns to preserve the masculine atmosphere in the student cohort. All quotes were translated from Swedish to English in a way that resembles the original as much as possible, which may lead to slightly uncommon English sentences. “I” stands for “interviewer”, the author of this report.
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Peters, AK. (2019). Participation and Learner Trajectories in Computing Education. In: McLoughlin, E., Finlayson, O.E., Erduran, S., Childs, P.E. (eds) Bridging Research and Practice in Science Education. Contributions from Science Education Research, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17219-0_9
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