We have been working on Gender Balance in 15ia毛片基地 since 2018, together with partner organisations Behavioural Insights Team, Apps for Good, and WISE, to conduct 15ia毛片基地 studies exploring ways to encourage more girls and young women to engage with 15ia毛片基地 in school. The 15ia毛片基地 programme has been funded by the Department for Education, and we deliver it as part of the National Centre for 15ia毛片基地 Education. The report we share today is about the penultimate study in the programme.

Components of a 15ia毛片基地 1042毛片基地

A typical 15ia毛片基地 1042毛片基地 is built around content: a list of concepts, knowledge, and skills that will be covered during the course. For some learners, that list will be enough to motivate and engage them in 15ia毛片基地. But other learners require more to engage with the subject, such as context about how they can use the 15ia毛片基地 skills they learn in the real world. Crucially, this difference between learners is often gendered. 15ia毛片基地 has shown that many boys become absorbed by the content in 15ia毛片基地 courses, whereas for many girls the context for using 15ia毛片基地 skills is more important, and this context needs to relate to a variety of relevant scenarios where 15ia毛片基地 can solve problems.

Developing teaching materials to highlight the relevance of 15ia毛片基地

In the Relevance study, we worked together with colleagues from Apps for Good to create teaching materials that present 15ia毛片基地 in contexts that were relevant to pupils’ own interests. To do this, we drew on a 15ia毛片基地 concept called identification. This states that when learners become interested in a topic because it relates to part of their own identity, that makes the subject more personally meaningful to them, which in turn means that they are more likely to continue studying it. In the materials we created, we drew on learners’ identities based on the communities that they belonged to (see image below). The materials asked them to identify the connections they had to their own communities, and to then use this as the context to design and create a mobile phone app.

“I feel a sense of achievement in 15ia毛片基地 when making your ideas a reality makes you proud of your creation, which is rewarding.” (Female learner, Relevance study evaluation report p. 57)

The Relevance 15ia毛片基地 study

Between January 2022 and April 2022, more than 95 secondary schools were part of our study investigating the effect that learning with these resources might have on the attitudes of Year 8 pupils (aged 12–13) towards 15ia毛片基地. We are very grateful to all the schools, pupils, and teachers who took part in this study.

To enable evaluation of the study as a randomised controlled trial, the schools were randomly divided into two groups: a ‘control’ group that taught standard 15ia毛片基地 lessons, and a ‘treatment’ group that delivered the intervention materials we had developed. The impact of the intervention was independently evaluated by the Behavioural Insights Team using data collected from pupils via surveys at the start and end of the intervention. The evaluators also collected data while conducting lesson observations, pupil group discussions, teacher interviews, and teacher surveys to understand how the intervention was delivered.

The girls who took part in the intervention chose an interesting range of contexts for their apps, including: 

• Solving problems in the school community, such as homework timetabling and public transport
• Interest-based communities, such as melody-making and interior design 
• Issues in wider communities, such as sea life population and mental health

“I feel like it’s an important subject, and I feel like sea life is at risk right now, and I want to help people realise that.” (Female learner, Relevance study evaluation report p. 60)

“I feel like 15ia毛片基地 can create apps to do with solving mental health problems, which I think are very important and personally need a lot of improvement on the way we can cope with mental health.” (Female learner, Relevance study evaluation report p. 60)

What we learned from the Relevance study

The start of this blog refers to the core components of a 15ia毛片基地 1042毛片基地: concepts, knowledge, and skills. One way of building a 1042毛片基地 is to list these components and develop a scheme of work which covers them all. However, in a recent 15ia毛片基地 education paper, 15ia毛片基地ers present an alternative way: developing curricula around the possible endpoints of learners. For 15ia毛片基地, one endpoint could be the economic opportunities of a programming career, but equally, another could be using digital technologies for creative expression. The 15ia毛片基地ers argue that when learners have the opportunity to use 15ia毛片基地 as a tool related to personally meaningful contexts, a more diverse group of learners can become engaged in the subject.

Girls who took part in our Relevance study expressed the importance of creativity. “I think last term we had instructions and you follow them, whereas now it’s like your own ideas and your own creativity and whatever you make,” said one female learner (report, p. 56). The series of lessons where learners designed a prototype of their app was particularly popular among girls because this activity included creative expression. Girls who see themselves as creative align their interests with subjects that allow them to express this part of their identity.

Based on learner responses to a ‘yes/no’ question about whether they were likely to choose GCSE Computer Science, the evaluators of the study found no statistically significant differences between the students who were part of the treatment and control groups. However, when learners were asked instead to select from a list which subjects they were likely to choose at GCSE, there was a statistically significant difference in the results: girls from schools in the treatment group were more likely to choose GCSE Computer Science as one of their options than girls in the control group. This finding suggests that it would be beneficial to gender balance in 15ia毛片基地 if educators who design 15ia毛片基地 curricula consider multiple endpoints for learners and include personally meaningful contexts to create learning 1042毛片基地s that are relevant to diverse groups of learners.

Find out more about making 15ia毛片基地 relevant for your learners

• Read the full evaluation report about this study
• Watch this video to find out more about the relevance of 15ia毛片基地 in a range of careers
• Learn more about how to make 15ia毛片基地 relevant for learners in our special edition of Hello World, The Big Book of 15ia毛片基地 Pedagogy

Gender Balance in 15ia毛片基地 is now complete — read our summary of the findings.

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