Whose STEM? Disrupting the Gender Crisis Within STEM

This article challenges implicit understandings of scientific inquiry and gender within contemporary responses to the underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Failing to recognize the gendered history of science, and thus STEM disciplines, we argue that much research and curricular interventions are overly invested in simply providing women institutional access to or creating feminized environments within STEM. Such shortsighted analyses lead to processes we term gender washing and painting pink, both of which diminish the possibilities for meaningful engagement with gendered ontologies within scientific inquiry. Working from important and diverse strands of feminist theory, we suggest that serious considerations of women and STEM must include a framework that critically engages the entanglement of gender and science. We conclude that a focused and intentional analysis of gender and scientific inquiry, that opposes constructions of STEM as fixed entities to simply be imparted or made accessible to women, has important implications for understanding science as a (post) human endeavor.     

Simultaneous Delivery of a Face-to-Face Course to On-Campus and Remote Off-Campus Students

The purpose of this case study was to determine the feasibility of delivering a course on-campus and in real time, simultaneously transmitting it to students who were remotely accessing the same course. In future years, it is anticipated that universities will have inadequate physical facilities to meet the demands of an increasing student population. Additionally, with warnings of impending pandemics, universities need to be prepared to deliver courses in alternative ways to ensure continuity of instruction. Thus, this pilot project was designed to deliver a course to a large section of students while also allowing off-campus students access to the course in real time. The planning and delivery of the course is described, including the technology used, the support provided by the university and technology support staff, the course that was used for the pilot project, and how students were selected to participate as the off-campus students. The perspectives of the instructor, teaching assistant, students (both on- and off-campus), and technology support personnel are summarized.     

On‐screen print: the role of captions as a supplemental literacy tool

Children living in poverty are 1.3 times as likely as non‐poor children to experience reading difficulties and lack key oral experiences that contribute to early literacy development. The purpose of this research was to study the effects of viewing commercially available educational television with closed captions. Seventy second‐ and third‐grade economically disadvantaged children living in urban locations participated in this experimental research design. Children were randomly assigned to view videos with or without closed captions. Captions helped children recognise and read more words, identify the meaning of those words, generate inferences regarding programme content and transfer these skills to a normative code‐related skill task. Risk status moderated word recognition performance: those at risk benefited from captions while those who were not at risk recognised more words when captions were absent.