How are women engaged in technology in their daily personal lives and in the workplace? What efforts by education effective recruit women into information technology? Get the inside stories – and recommendations -- in this two-presentation session.
1) “Technology Tamers: The influence of women in ICT adoption, use and enjoyment”
This presentation will focus on the results of a qualitative study in India and Australia that explores ways in which middle-class, well-educated females use ICT for everyday use and the influences they have on extending that adoption, use and enjoyment of technology into their family units. The focus will include discussion of how libraries can best meet the needs of such users to forge digital inclusion ICT pathways.
2) “STEMing information studies: Exploring educational opportunities to enhance gender equity”
This presentation reports the results of a discourse and content analysis of STEM gender equity websites and IS publications that identify opportunities for IS programs and research activities to more proactively reduce gender inequities in the field.
As education reform in the US continues to make headlines, researchers work toward understanding how these changes impact the lives of teachers, students, and society. This paper outlines the findings of an interdisciplinary study conducted by information scientists, educators, and computer scientists that explores how the tweets of teachers are contributing to this conversation. Using a dataset comprised of almost one million tweets, we explore whether and how teachers are using Twitter as a space to discuss the profession and politics of teaching. To explore these questions using “big data”, we employ a Deweyian lens developed through a reading of his seminal work, Democracy and Education (1997/1916) that outlines a vision for educational practice for social change. Specifically, we explore the following questions:
Are teachers developing community on Twitter, per Dewey?
How can teachers’ use of Twitter be read through Dewey’s joint concepts of democracy and education?
What are some challenges to democratic discussion of educational issues on Twitter?
The community of information professionals represents a broad range of identities, abilities, and talents. While they may still be underrepresented in the profession, librarians from diverse groups should still be contributing their perspective to theory development and best practices. To complement existing research in reference and information service (RIS) that focuses on the behavioral aspects of RIS, it is important to conduct research on the practitioner perspective of RIS to identify the thoughts and feelings that motivate these behaviors. Study of the practitioner perspective must include a diverse group of professionals in order to develop an inclusive understanding of RIS for practitioners. However, professionals representing diverse racial/ethnic groups can be difficult to access because they represent a minority of professionals -- making up only 12% of library professionals in the United States (American Library Association, 2012). As such, all of the voices of the diverse community of practitioners are not often heard.
The aims of the study are
This study specifically focuses on the experience of RIS for librarians of color. Through a qualitative, phenomenological study, the voice of professionals that have not yet contributed to an understanding of RIS will be heard. This study is an effort to reach beyond librarians from the majority group and to create an inclusive understanding of RIS.
