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Phenomenography as a Research Approach on 2009-11-17
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he point of departure for these studies was one of the simplest observations that can be made about learning, namely that some people are better at learning than others. This straightforward observation led to the first question which was to be investigated empirically:
1. What does it mean, that some people are better at learning than others?
which in its turn led to the second question:
2. Why are some people better at learning than others?
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YouTube - DIRTY ELECTRO HOUSE!!!!! TENMINMIX APRIL on 2009-11-15
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Barriers to Women in Academic Science and Engineering on 2009-11-14
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Role modelling has been identified as an effective socialization
process in work life. Modelling oneself on an older person has been
found to be a good way of creating a pathway into a career,
making for likely early success.
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(Mokros et.al, 1981: 11).
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Beyond strictly professional issues
women mentees are concerned with the interpersonal quality of the
relationship and seek a sympathetic mentor (Dowdall, 1979).
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In the sciences, male senior researchers have traditionally served as
role models for their junior colleagues. As women entered scientific
careers they were expected to follow a male model, accept a distinctly
subordinate status (the scientific equivalent of the traditional
female role, the research associate), or leave the profession. More
recently, some women have attempted to carve out a new status and a
new professional identity for themselves in the world of academic
science (Kemelgor, 1989). This involves a different relationship to
work and students in which work life is pared down to professional
elements and limited in time so that a private life may be
constructed and compartmentalized apart from the professional role.
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There
were a number of women in my field who were well known as I was
going through, most of them were single and remained single."
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Most women graduate students made a sharp distinction between women
faculty whom they viewed as relevant or irrelevant as role models.
Women faculty who were perceived to be instrumentals, emulating an aggressive male
scientist role and attempting to become 'one of the boys,' were often not
viewed as viable models.
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On the other hand, a woman faculty member who was
successfully balancing career and family was looked to as a model by
several women in her department,
even though she was somewhat less available due to time constraints.
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Everyone feels the same way: Frustrated that
it's tough to get her, but that they really have her when
they do."
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However, for most female students anxiety about the present and the
future is exacerbated because there is no model to demonstrate how to
deal with problems or issues. "Women are dropping out
because there are no role models to show you how 'you get there.'"
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The need for women faculty to show how
professional and family responsibilites could both be met was
expressed by a student who said: "I think it would be
interesting to see [the female professor] get pregnant, so we could
see how someone else deals with the situation. I have no clue
whatsoever. I don't know what it's like in academics. I'm scared
about that."
Thus, for the most part,
students are left to feel they must be pioneers. In some instances
this situation was resented.
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Most importantly, the role model women wanted was the woman who
could concretely explain the necessary strategies and steps to be
taken to succeed in graduate school. This conclusion derives from the reality
that: (1) rules are made by men, (2) young men are socialized to
those rules and further socialized in graduate school. They have
learned the strategies, (3) most women have not been socialized to be
autonomous, and therefore they have difficulty figuring out
the rules; and (4) most male advisors
do not teach women the strategies
necessary to succeed.
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The
absence of viable female role models in most of the departments
studied creates anxiety among women graduate students and is believed
by them to contribute to the rate of attrition. Nevertheless, women
graduate students report successful and unsuccessful experiences with
both men and women advisors. Men can be sensitive advisors and women
can be relevant role models but few men and women faculty currently
meet the needs of most women graduate students.
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Of course, this finding does not hold for those very few graduate
women who excluded other interests in favor of their career.
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(22% of the
female students in the four departments at private research
university, as against only 4% of the male students, have female
faculty advisors. While the proportion of female and male students
entering subfields where female faculty advisors are available is
fairly similar (32% and 24%, respectively), the proportion actually
signing up with those female professors differs by a factor of four
(68% to 17%).)
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omen graduate students seek out women faculty members
as advisors in hopes of finding a sympathetic mentor, while male
graduate students sign up with a woman only after she has achieved a
distinguished position in the field.
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Some take the current low rate of womens particpation as an accurate
reflection of the number of women with the ability to contribute to
science. We find that the organization and culture of academic science
deters many women of high scientific ability from making their
contribution. In those instances where a department faced up to this
situation and altered its behavior, womens participation improved
dramatically.
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A broader recognition of the need to change and
requisite actions are required to reconstruct male-gendered
science and engineering departments. (Indeed, the experience of
In-balance Program at Center for Particle Astrophysics, University of
Califronia, Berkeley is that many of these changes are necessary for
both women and men.)
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- acceptance of a female model of doing science in a
collegial workplace accompanied by time for a private sphere of life apart from
science;
- synchronizing the biological and tenure clocks by allowing a longer
time span before tenure;
- rescinding exogamy requirements for career advancement thereby reducing the negative effects of limits on geographical mobility;
- provision of a signficant number of relevant role models so that
younger women can envision a future in science.
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A female graduate dean at
another university reported on the efficacy at her institution of
administrative leadership
to remind people of gender and minority issues at every
step of the academic process. "We had a graduate program director who
took this issue up as a personal cause."
She reported that it was most important to be
stringent on sexual harassment so that
eveyone knew that it is morally and legally wrong, officially and
unofficially
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Among its leaders were
several middle-aged males who
had simultaneously been in therapy in a community where the local
culture had been strongly influenced by feminist values.
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(In another
instance the
change did not come voluntarily but only after a female faculty
member threatened to resign when a sexist male faculty member was about to
be named permanent chair. This action received nationwide publicity, forcing university officials to do something about the sexist
environment of the department. They
prescribed a year of gender sensitivity training for the acting chair
who resigned the position. See Chronicle of Higher Education
April 1, 1992 p. A 14.)
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All women students and faculty interviewed reported that they joined
it rather than a department at an other prestigious institution,
because of their perception that it offered a collaborative,
cooperative, and collegial milieu. They were attracted by the warm
interpersonal interactions they had experienced when they interviewed
and by a sense of personal concern for the candidate conveyed by
faculty and students. They were also impressed by the sense of
well-being members of the department displayed. Most had been disturbed by
the demoralization of students at other departments where they had
interviewed, having heard stories of exploitative advisors and
anonymity in large research groups.
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While the science being done in the department or by a faculty member
often initiated a candidates interest in the school; the emotional
gratification of the interview process together with a preference for
a collegial research environment, influenced the candidates final
decision.
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n this department a female academic model based on
interpersonal relationships, affiliation and nurturance had become
acccepted as legitimate and had even become the departmental norm.
This was in strong contrast to another research site, where the
expression by women of a need for these characteristics in the
laboratory environment was derided as a desire for dependence and
emotionality by the adherents of the patriarchal system that was in
place.
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The key to mentoring women is not whether the mentors are women or
men, but whether they are able to relate to women.
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Patriarchal institutional roles,
whether enacted by men or women, result in female behaviors and
preferences being misinterpreted, for example, preference for a
collegial rather than a competitive working environment, as inferior
rather than different. Moreover, most women students reject an
academic lifestyle that excludes non-scientific relationships and
activities, including childrearing.
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hat the seven year race for tenure with the biological clock for
child bearing are incompatible has obvious negative consequences for
women's participation in high-powered academic science.
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They would be able to pursue
tenure singlemindedly without intereference from other obligations. He
recognized that most women were unwilling to delay having children
that long and thus saw no answer to this dilemma.
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One female professor has spoken up in faculty meetings on behalf of
extending the time before tenure review for women with children. She
sees this recommendation as a double edged sword, however, pressuring
for reducing the demands made on women with children might jeopardize
their status by supporting the notion that women with children cannot
be productive. Of course, the extension could be made gender-neutral,
with the same provisions offered to men with extensive
responsibilities for childrearing.
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Departmental
and university-wide efforts to make workplace child care facilities
more widely available would help. An infant care center in a
neigboring school, discovered by one
female graduate student, made a significant difference in
the ability of several women with children, in one of the
departments studied, to carry on their graduate work virtually without
interruption.
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his is not a call for a "mommy track" with different and lower
expectations of achievement and
rewards but a serious effort to accommodate the significant number of women
who are not willing to forego family and children prior to tenure.
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It is unrealistic to expect significant numbers of women to follow
the male model.
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Accomodation is currently made for faculty members, typically men, who
found corporate firms or research centers; however these time conflicts usually
occur after tenure has been attained, whereas women's time conflicts involving family
responsibilities tend to occur earlier in their career trajectory,
prior to tenure placing them at risk.
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Simply put women are
more vulnerable than men prior to tenure.
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The limited geographical mobility of many women restricts their choice
of both graduate school and job. A highly successful female scientist
interviewed in another study explained the impact of location on her
career, given existing norms of hiring. A research associate, her
advance in rank was limited, as was her exposure to students and the
experience of raising her own funds.
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That's
one of the best ways to achieve a permanent position and to increase
one's standing; to have the lever or the threat of saying, well, I,
I'm going to leave.
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This practice is especially significant for women who are geographically
immobile in a region with few or even only one research universit
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However, even given these disadvantages a significant number
of women receive degrees in science at the BA and even the Ph.D.
levels. Nevertheless, fewer pursue careers in science and there are
few senior women professors (Moen, 1988).
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- Encouraging the creation of a
critical mass of women faculty in academic science and engineering
departments that, in and of itself, has an effect in changing academic
cultures and, by implication, lowering barriers for future
generations,
- Revising the image of high level careers in science and engineering
for women from anomalous to "normal" provides the
incentive of examples of achievement to encourage younger
women to break through the barriers prevalent at early stages of the
career.
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These graduate students and professors, after successfully negotiating
the numerous barriers to entry that exclude so many other women, often
pursue less demanding careers than their male peers. These women are
not lost to science. Rather they are women who, with a few
exceptions, are excluded from positions in the top academic
departments in their field. Many pursue research careers in industry;
others have taken appointments in teaching colleges.
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Whether these
scientists are excluded from high-level academic careers through
discrimination by academic departments unwilling to accept women as
equals or other reasons the result is the same. There is a pool of
women scientists working in industry and lower down the academic
ladder whom their advisors, usually men, agree are the equal of their
male peers who are pursuing research careers at the highest academic
levels. If professorial jobs were made available, qualified women
scientists could be recruited to create a critical mass of at least
three women in each leading academic department. This would provide
the range of female role models necessary to bring forth an enlarged
next generation of women scientists
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Culture is generally believed to be highly
resistant to change but our findings suggest a few key
points of intervention. Specific steps
could be taken to mitigate the negative effects of the male
scientific ethos on the recruitment of women to science and
engineering.
The rigidity of the existing academic structure and
male faculty misperceptions of women scientists constitute formidable
barriers to the entry and retention of women at the highest levels of
academic science. However, the fact that qualified women who would
be interested in academic research careers are now in industry or
teaching colleges suggests that, should these final barriers be lowered
or removed, women scientists who already exist might
pursue careers at the highest levels of academic science.
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What can be done to implement these proposals?
A first step is to become more self-conscious
about the social organization of human scientific endeavors
By accepting various parochial ways of
conceptualizing, investigating and organizing the conduct of science,
significant sectors of the population have been excluded from full
participation, and alternative cognitive perspectives and
organizational styles have been repressed. As we become aware of such
factors as masculine models of gender as the basis for many modes of
doing science, a policy space is opened up where change can take
place. Social movements and support groups organized by excluded
groups, changes in departmental practices and university policies
taken at the initiative of faculty and administrators and governmental
affirmative action policies and funding programs are all part of the
emerging picture of science open to all talent in fact as well as by
precept.
The second step is transcending masculine and feminine scientific
roles and practices (Abir-Am, 1991).
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The sociology of gender and
science itself has moved beyond comparing men and women scientists
according to implicitly masculine criteria. The traditional study of
number of publications, with article counts accepted as a primary
indicator of productivity and achievement, is ambiguous. Women publish
less frequently than men but their publications are more frequently
cited (Long, 1990).
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Scientific practices that incorporate both
traditional male and female perspectives
into a broader non-sexist framework would free both
experimentation and verification of knowledge from the exclusionary
oppositions in which that which defines feminine as automatically
antithetical to "good science"(Keller, 1980). Under these conditions
impersonal evaluation would be realized as a component of the social
structure of science.
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Abir-Am, Pnina. 1991. "Science Policy for Women in Science: From
Historical Case Studies to an Agenda for the 1990's" History of
Science Meetings, Madison, Wisconsin, November 2.
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American Institute of Physics (AIP), 1991. Enrollments and
Degrees. New York: AIP (#R$-151.28).
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- Benjamin, Marina. 1991. Science and Sensibility: Gender and
Scientific Enquiry; 1780-1945 London: Basil Blackwell.
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Cole, Jonathan R. and Harriet Zuckerman. 1987. "Marriage and
Motherhood and Research Performance in Science" Scientific American
256: 119-125.
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Mac OS X: Using email aliases in Mail on 2009-11-14
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30 Places to Watch Free Movies Online | Open Culture on 2009-11-12
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Chicken Curry | eCurry - The Recipe Blog on 2009-11-12
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Computer science lacks women, minorities - SD Times: Software Development News on 2009-11-10
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The U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts
high demand for programmers. Its Occupational Handbook for 2006-2016 lists computer application software engineers as the fourth most in-demand occupation due to "increased applications of emerging technologies" and the growing complexity of businesses.
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Seventy percent fewer students have majored in computer science since 2000; women declined by 80%, she said, citing Computing Research Association data. The Higher Education Research Institute has determined that only 1% of students are majoring in computer science, and 0.3% are women, she added.
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"At the graduate level, however, non-resident aliens become a major factor while minority enrollment in general plummets to very small percentages," he added.
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Cuny added, "If this trend holds true, we will be unable to produce enough students for the jobs that are out there. Large segments of the population do not participate in computer science-related careers."
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Retention of minority employees is another issue. Nearly half of all minorities leave technology jobs to enter other occupations, said National Association for the Advancement of Colored People vice president Deborah Bey.
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Teresa Dahlberg, director of the Diversity in Information Technology Institute at UNC Charlotte. People tend to associate with "like communities," where people have similar backgrounds and interests, she explained.
"If someone is the only woman or minority in a company, they will often not attract a peer group or informal mentor as easily as someone who is part of the majority.
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"There is a good amount of research that shows that women are judged more harshly than men, for hiring, evaluations and promotions," she added. "Virginia Valian [author of "Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women"] shows this for women in science, technology, engineering and math faculty jobs." Virginia Valian is a professor at Hunter College.
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Well, I got an A in my programming class, but I seemed to have to work much harder than everyone else. So, I'm not really interested in computing anymore,'" she said.
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Many women and minorities are looking for work that is socially relevant and meaningful, Dahlberg explained.
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The NSF's K-12 programs focus on informal education designed to spark student interest in computing by showing how computers can solve problems through creating and manipulating rather than being used as tools, Cuny added.
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Computer Science Teachers Association: Attracting Young Women and Minorities To Computing on 2009-11-10
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Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering on 2009-11-10
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Women and Computer Science on 2009-11-10
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