Re: How To Recruit Women to Tech and IT Classes

["Dewey Dykstra, Jr." <dykstrad@EMAIL.BOISESTATE.EDU>]

Fran Poodry writes about...

> Haven't we had this discussion before?  Still, I might as well speak up.
> I agree with Rick:
>
> Rick Tarara says:
> There seems to be enough gender differences in learning
> styles that we need to be concerned with instructional techniques that are
> too narrowly aimed at particular styles which may put either women or men at
> a disadvantage.  So the gender issues are not in the Physics, but in the
> doing and teaching of physics.
>
> And I am interested in reading the book Dewey has suggested, but I am
> particularly caught by Jim Green's statement:
>
> Jim Green Says:
> "Anti-promoting"???  I don't see any physics instructor standing in front
> of her/his class and saying "Folks, physics is a lousy field to be majoring
> in, try the law, or maybe engineering"   Of course if a male instructor
> said something like "Ladies, physics is a male field; stay away, he would
> be fired and maybe sued.  If a female instructor said this, that would be
> ok, but I can't see a female physicist saying this to female students.  I
> don't know what would happen if a chemistry instructor said the likes of
> this. <g>
>
> What "anti-promoting"?
>
> I know a female physicist who told me and a friend of mine NOT to get a
> PhD in physics, that it wasn't "worth it."  Granted, that was just after
> she had finished defending her dissertation, or whatever it was that she
> was supposed to do to obtain the degree.  However, she loves physics.  I
> love physics, and I know other women who love physics.  But I do not want
> a PhD in it, nor do I want to get one.  Is it because a particular person
> "anti-promoted" physics to me?  No.  It is the system and process.  I like
> having a social life, for one thing.

I am reminded of another book:  Knowledge in Motion by Jan Nespoor, Falmer
Press (I believe).  I found his ethnographic study very penetrating.  His
point that there is a coherent story one can tell about the making of
undergrad physics majors.  I have to go back and look again at his
explanation of his title, but his description of what it was like to be a
physics major, I find right on.  I think this one way to describe the
experience (obviously not the only way, but a very revealing way
nonetheless and germain to the current thread).  That it was not fabricated
I am convinced because I am pretty sure that I know the institution where
he did the work although he never states where he worked in the book.  If
you read the sections on physics majors you will see some commentary about
what it is like not to be a caucasian, unmarried male in the process.

Dewey


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Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr.                 Phone: (208)426-3105
Professor of Physics                  Dept:  (208)426-3775
Department of Physics/MCF421/418      Fax: (208)426-4330
Boise State University            dykstrad@email.boisestate.edu
1910 University Drive                 Boise Highlanders
Boise, ID 83725-1570                  novice piper: GHB, Uilleann

"As a result of modern research in physics, the ambition and hope,
still cherished by most authorities of the last century, that physical
science could offer a photographic picture and true image of reality
had to be abandoned."  --M. Jammer in Concepts of Force, 1957.

"If what we regard as real depends on our theory, how can we make
reality the basis of our philosophy? ...But we cannot distinguish
what is real about the universe without a theory...it makes no sense
to ask if it corresponds to reality, because we do not know what
reality is independent of a theory."--S. Hawking in Black Holes
and Baby Universes, 1993.
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