Week 3 – Misconceptions

This week introduced misconceptions in IT subjects. I analysed the QCAA Senior Secondary subjects and levels of achievement documents from 2006 and 2016 to analyse the differences between the years. What I found was enrolments had pretty much doubled from 2006 to 2015 however the enrolment of girls had quite significantly dropped over the years. But despite the girls enrolment dropping the level of achievement the girls attained had increased. The achievement of girls was higher than the achievement of the boys when put into perspective.

When I was on prac I had 3 IT classes, one year 12 ITS class that consisted of 8 boys, 2 girls, a year 11 ICT class which consisted of 15 boys and 2 girls and a year 10 IT class that contained 29 boys. Current trend is that the girls are not doing IT subjects and my mentor on prac had concerns for the lack of interest girls had in the IT subjects. He had expressed to me that we need to re interest girls back into IT and reinvigorate the subject to be more attractive to all genders and remove the stigma around IT of it being boring or a boys subject.

I would like to follow on from my discussions with my mentor to encourage girls to get back into IT subjects and to embrace the subject through introduction of elements that are interesting to all genders, to ensure the content is of interest to both genders and encourages creativity, initiative and excitement for everyone that undertakes these subjects.

Some of the misconceptions students have about IT subjects

• IT is for boys
• IT is a nerdy subject
• Coding is too hard
• You need to be good at maths and science to do IT
• IT is really hard
• IT is a bludge subject
• I know everything about IT, I wont learn anything new
• I already know how to use a computer
• IT is boring