Alice Christie

Using E-mail Within a Classroom Based on Feminist Pedagogy

AbstractThis article highlights parts of a descriptive study of elementary school children using technology and an array of telecommunications tools. The study analyzed naturalistic data to answer the question, “How does gender interface with computers and telecommunications?” Data for the overall study included field notes based on six months of participation and observation, 750 pages of e-mail messages, daily logs, newsletters, text and graphic documents generated by the children, and transcripts of interviews. This article depends on three data sources: e-mail messages, daily logs, and interviews. A feminist perspective informed the analysis. Analysis seemed to warrant three claims: both girls and boys used technology to confirm gender stereotypes, both girls and boys used technology to defy gender stereotypes, and gender biases in classroom interactions are more invisible and more difficult to eliminate than expected. A feminist perspective is essential in this struggle, but insufficient for eliminat...

Perceptions and Uses of Technology among Adolescent Boys and Girls

In this study, I used interpretive methods in an open-ended computer environment to study and explain gender diversity in middle school computer classrooms. Through observations and a series of focus groups, I found that adolescent boys and girls view and use computers differently. Each gender seems to accept this as a natural part of their culture, and, in general, are accepting of each other’s visions and uses. Turkle and Papert called for a new social construction of the computer to contribute to our understanding of the ways males and females think about and use computers. This paper answers that call. It breaks ground for future studies to create, and simultaneously study, computer cultures which honour female and male ways of knowing and which allow the research community to begin to break down gender stereotypes and the idea of one privileged — usually male — way of thinking about computers.