Gender Differences in Technology Illuminated Through Test Performance (outcome) Data and ‘Realtime’, ‘On-task’ (process) Data

Abstract

Introduction for the 2015 DATA Special Edition This paper was written in 1994 as an internal TERU paper – it has not previously been published. It draws from two research projects that gathered data on gender differences in performance in technology. As with the Tasks in Technology paper (also included in this Special Edition), the wider context was the early years of the National Curriculum and specifically concerning the Standard Assessment Tasks (SATs). We were aware of the sensitivity of the gender data, essentially that girls seriously outperformed boys and the concomitant concern that the tests themselves might contain implicit bias, so we undertook a systematic review of the data from our two TERU projects that could inform the matter. The first provided ‘outcome’ data from APU tests (15 year olds in 1988 – Kimbell et. al., 1991). The latter, derived from the Understanding Technological Approaches (UTA) project (Kimbell et. al., 1994) allowed us to crosscheck these data with ‘process’ data derived from classroom observations (across all school years from 1-11 in 1992/3 -). I focus on two specific aspects of gender performance that were highlighted in test findings: • concerning ‘active’ and ‘reflective’ response modes to tasks; • concerning design proposals in relation to ‘users’ and for ‘manufacture’.