From Software Design to Classroom Practice: An Australian Case Study of the Gendered Production, Distribution and Acquisition of Computing Knowledge

Abstract

This paper explores the social construction of computing discourses and the negotiation of positions within these discourses by software designers, classroom teachers and students. It explores the relay of power relations from the macro level of policy formation, to the mezzo level of curriculum design and the micro level of classroom practice. Specifically, the paper focuses on ideological struggles over the construction of gendered power relations within computing knowledge at each of these three structural levels. The paper also details classroom computing practices within two Australian primary schools, focussing specifically on the gendered construction of student identities in relation to computer use. It is argued that boys were often positioned within school computing discourses as ‘risk-takers’ and girls were positioned as the ‘Other’ to the socially constructed male norm. At the same time, some girls managed to gain some ground in interrupting gendered power-knowledge relations and resisting their positioning as domestics in the politics of classroom computing.