The inequality paradox in technology, and computational thinking through the eyes of ATD

Speaker:

Assistant Professor Louise Meier Carlsen, ITU, Copenhagen

Abstract

In my seminar I will present a bit about my work already conducted with part of the team at Centre for Computing Education Research (CCER) at the IT University of Copenhagen, and what I plan to study for the foreseeable future while at ITU, hopefully with a tie or two to IND.

My first work with CCER is a study of the inequality paradox i.e., how the proportion of women in STEM seems to be low in countries with high living conditions, and how the proportion of women in STEM seems to be high when living conditions are low. We have concentrated our study on the T (technology) and the proportion of women admitted into computer studies. We study the proportion of women against a poverty index, time, country/culture, and a health-education-economic index using multiple linear regression.

In the second part of the seminar, I will talk about my future work of studying the interplay of computing and mathematics in an educational context, and in particular how the Anthropological Theory of Didactic (ATD) can enable these studies. First, how the notion of technique can be used to analyse the grand techniques of computational thinking and explicitly point out the institutional value that is placed on the different grand techniques (building on work from the group at CCER pointing out three different approaches to computational thinking). Secondly, I will focus on the potential of implementing computing in mathematics education (as the case is in Denmark). The plan is to follow a lesson (or ten), or design a lesson, and analyse the students’ practice and knowledge with the notion of praxeology. And ask question such as what are the different potentials for implementing computational thinking in mathematics education (looking at the levels of didactical co-determination)? How can these potentials be realised? To what extend can computational thinking be implemented in mathematics education (is something lost computational wise or mathematically)? What type of didactical moments are pivotal when computational thinking is implemented in a mathematics lesson (looking at didactical moments or didactical situations together with the instrumental approach)?