Nancy Reid

Positivism/Technicism
Positivistic /Technicist accounts of equity, probably more accurately described as accounts of "equality" (4), provide a quantitative balancing model of "the two genders" in terms of differential access to, and usages of, educational technologies. With biological sex taken as equivalent to gender, the problem is construed as the numerical under-representation of female students in computer science classes, computer camps, in-class computer centers and the like (see Sutton, 1991). The goal is to increase numbers of female "users" and eliminate their apparent "attitude problems" in relation to new technologies. Two central assumptions made in these accounts are 1) that changes brought about by the advent of new educational technologies are necessarily positive in their effects, and 2) that female "resistance" to these changes can largely be attributed to psychological factors such as fear, insecurity, and the social conditioning provided by "biased" media advertisements of computers portraying few (if any) appropriate female role models.

Much ink has been spilled to date delineating the perceived pedagogical challenges implicit in the systematic under-representation of female students in school-based computer cultures (5). Collis, for example, reports an oft-cited study of "Sex-related differences in attitudes towards computers" which exemplifies the explicit technicism of positivistic/empirical accounts of gender inequities and educational technologies (6). The main argument Collis provides for the under-representation of female students in school-based computer activities is couched in a psychological model of "negative attitudes" and "poor self-efficacy." Collis presents these as "factors that influence women to resist occupations typically associated with men" and as "self-limiting stereotypes held by contemporary adolescents-towards computers." She speculates that "women may choose to be professionally disenfranchised because of the influence of attitude patterns similar to those they have traditionally shown toward mathematics and science" (7).

Drawing on data collected by administering an "Attitudes Towards Computers" survey to nearly 2,000 Grades 8 and 12 students, Collis reports on the degree of disassociation: "The results ... support low self-confidence among girls with regard to computers. The typical girl believes that women in general are capable, but that she, as an individual, is not competent or likely to be a computer user. ... Throughout the survey girls tended to endorse a stereotyped, somewhat negative view of computer users" (8).

Collis' main recommendations for reducing gender inequities in school computer use involve making use of the expertise of school-based counsellors "working to change girls' attitudes" and "expanding on the positive attitudes girls have about themselves and their writing abilities" by having them use computers in "English composition and information handling steps," with which Collis finds girls to be more confident (9).