Addressing Women's Ways of Knowing to Improve the Technology Education Environment for All Students.

I often help my female friends to negotiate parts of the technical world. For one it may be going on a car buying expedition, for another it may be a computer installation, and for yet another it may be the replacement of rotten boards on a front porch. They know that I enjoy such expeditions and, I hope, that they actually believe that I can be helpful. One recent Labor Day weekend I was engaged in helping a friend to replace the worn and damaged boards on her front porch. We worked the day away, pulling boards, removing rotten wood, and replacing it with solid wood. As we worked, I thought about how she probably had not been given much instruction in how to use tools and to construct with wood. Nonetheless, she was trying to do a simple household repair in order to save herself money. Her skills and tool selections were clear evidence of a lack of technical knowledge and her plans for the repair process, while adequate, needed some improvement. Probably, I thought, like my own school experiences, she did not have the opportunity to study “industrial arts” when she was going to school. Yet, I was concerned because young women today, given the opportunity to do so, are still not taking technology education courses in great numbers. Women and girls often perceive the subject of technology education as a male domain, especially after they have had a course in technology education (Hendley, Stables, Parkinson, & Tanner, 1996; Bame, Dugger, & deVries, 1993; Bame & Dugger, 1990). Yet, women are technologists. Women are and have always been significant contributors to the making of the environment of which we are a part. Every woman has been a technological being, using and often inventing tools, materials, and processes in order to adapt and modify her world. Their contributions have been either focused on the traditional homemaking roles of females, or they have been diminished in the records of industrial and economic spheres (Wajcman, 1991). In addition to diminishing the role of women in technology and engineering, many technical occupations, including science, have a low representation of women. Are there differences between women and men which might influence their choice of study and which need to be addressed? Can technology educators begin to address the lack of participation _____________________________

[1]  Roger I. Simon,et al.  A Discourse Not Intended for Her: Learning and Teaching Within Patriarchy , 1986 .

[2]  U. Franklin.  The real world of technology , 1993 .

[3]  E. Allen Bame,et al.  Pupils' Attitudes toward Technology--PATT-USA. , 1993 .

[4]  K. Weiler.  Women Teaching for Change , 1987 .

[5]  Susan Bordo,et al.  The Cartesian Masculinization of Thought , 1986, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.

[6]  E. Byrne.  Women and Education , 1978 .

[7]  James A. Hales,et al.  Jackson's Mill Industrial Arts Curriculum Theory: A Base for Curriculum Conceptualization. Part 2 of a Two-Part Series. , 1982 .

[8]  W. Gove,et al.  A Feminist Perspective in the Academy: The Difference It Makes. , 1984 .

[9]  R. Bernstein.  The restructuring of social and political theory , 1978 .

[10]  T. Lauretis.  Technologies Of Gender , 1987 .

[11]  Evelyn Reed.  Sexism and Science , 1978 .

[12]  S. Hrdy.  7 Empathy, Polyandry, and the Myth of the Coy Female , 1986 .

[13]  R. Deem.  Women and schooling , 1978 .

[14]  T. Kuhn,et al.  The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. , 1964 .

[15]  E. Keller.  Reflections on Gender and Science , 1985 .

[16]  J. Wajcman.  Feminism Confronts Technology , 1991 .

[17]  John Parkinson,et al.  Pupils' attitudes to technology in key stage 3 of the national curriculum: A study of pupils in South Wales , 1996 .

[18]  Vernon Reynolds,et al.  Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science. , 1991 .

[19]  Blythe McVicker Clinchy,et al.  Women s ways of knowing: The development of self , 1988 .

[20]  J. Donovan,et al.  Feminist Theory: The Intellectual Traditions of American Feminism , 1985 .

[21]  M. Belenky,et al.  Women's ways of knowing : the development of self, voice, and mind , 1988 .

[22]  Cheris Kramarae.  Technology and Women's Voices: Keeping in Touch , 1988 .

[23]  H. Longino.  Science as Social Knowledge , 1990 .

[24]  D. Haraway.  Primatology is Politics by Other Means , 1984, PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association.

[25]  Sue V. Rosser.  Teaching science and health from a feminist perspective : a practical guide , 1986 .

[26]  S. Harding.  The science question in feminism , 1986 .

[27]  Paul W. DeVore,et al.  Technology, an Introduction , 1980 .

[28]  R. M. Hall,et al.  The Classroom Climate: A Chilly One for Women?. , 1982 .

[29]  B. Hooks.  Teaching to transgress : education as the practice of freedom , 1994 .

[30]  R. Bernstein,et al.  The restructuring of social and political theory , 1977 .

[31]  W. G. Perry.  Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years: A Scheme. Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education Series. , 1970 .