Stuck in the shallow end : education, race, and computing / Jane Margolis ; Rachel Estrella ... [et al.].

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Margolis, Jane.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Children of minorities--Education (Secondary)--United States.

Children of minorities.

Computer science--Study and teaching (Secondary)--United States.

Computer science.

Digital divide--United States.

Digital divide.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (216 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, c2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The number of African Americans and Latino/as receiving undergraduate and advanced degrees in computer science is disproportionately low, according to recent surveys. And relatively few African American and Latino/a high school students receive the kind of institutional encouragement, educational opportunities, and preparation needed for them to choose computer science as a field of study and profession. In Stuck in the Shallow End, Jane Margolis looks at the daily experiences of students and teachers in three Los Angeles public high schools: an overcrowded urban high school, a math and science magnet school, and a well-funded school in an affluent neighborhood. She finds an insidious "virtual segregation" that maintains inequality. Two of the three schools studied offer only low-level, how-to (keyboarding, cutting and pasting) introductory computing classes. The third and wealthiest school offers advanced courses, but very few students of color enroll in them. The race gap in computer science, Margolis finds, is one example of the way students of color are denied a wide range of occupational and educational futures. Margolis traces the interplay of school structures (such factors as course offerings and student-to-counselor ratios) and belief systems -- including teachers' assumptions about their students and students' assumptions about themselves. Stuck in the Shallow End is a story of how inequality is reproduced in America -- and how students and teachers, given the necessary tools, can change the system.

Contents:

""Contents ""; ""Foreword""; ""Acknowledgments""; ""Introduction: The Myth of Technology as the “Great Equalizer�""; ""1 An Unlikely Metaphor: The Color Line in Swimming and Computer Science""; ""2 Technology Rich, But Curriculum Poor""; ""3 Normalizing the Racial Divide in High School Computer Science""; ""4 Claimed Spaces: “Preparatory Privilege� and High School Computer Science""; ""5 Teachers as Potential Change Agents: Balancing Equity Reform and Systemic Change""; ""6 Technology Policy Illusions""; ""Conclusion: “The Best and the Brightest�?""; ""Afterword""

""Appendix A: Methodology: Process and Reflections""""Notes""; ""References""; ""About the Authors""; ""Index""

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based on PDF viewed 12/23/2015.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0-262-26096-4

0-262-27910-X

1-4356-6563-5

OCLC:

904735486