Dr. Kathleen Burnett
Even in the most democratic and economically developed of societies, deeply held beliefs and patterns of culture affect accesss to and equity in higher education and employment. Cultural and societal norms interact in complex ways that perpetuate barriers to representative participation by marginalized groups across all walks of life. Equity in information technology (IT) education and employment is of the utmost importance to the future of all nations. Globally, women's participation in the IT workforce is at the top of national agendas, but even within the U.S. a scant and conceptually flawed research base makes it difficult to address the precipitous decline in women's participation in IT education and the IT workforce (Barker and Aspray, 2006; Cohoon and Aspray, 2006). We do not know why women's participation in IT education and employment has declined over the past three decades as opportunities have increased. What we do know is that of the 21 percent of the U.S. computing workforce who are women, only eight percent are minorities. Black women comprise just three percent; Latinas comprise less than one percent (NCWIT, 2006). The long-term goal of my work in this stream is to build a robust and theoretically informed research base to inform efforts to address these inequities.
As I prepared to leave my administrative position, I asked two doctoral students to join me in developing this new stream of research. Our initial efforts to examine gender and IT education and employment were hindered by a lack of consistency in the definition of information technology in the public discourse, which became the focus of our research for the next several years. In 2006, Manimegalai M Subramaniam and I addressed this problem in "What's the Matter with the Information Technology Workforce?" This article, published in the online, peer-reviewed journal First Monday, discussed the need to develop a comprehensive and dynamic definition of information technology.
In September 2006 Myoungho Yi, a recent doctoral graduate whose dissertation research I had supervised, joined us on a panel "Defining Information Technology to Meet the Needs of a Global Workforce" at the Association of Internet Researchers' annual conference IR 7.0 in Brisbane, Australia. This panel proposed using two emerging Internet technologies, wikis and ontology, to build consensus regarding such a definition and to enhance the responsiveness and flexibility of systems like the Bureau of Labor Statistic's Standard Occupational Classification System (SOCS). My paper for the panel examined the use of "Wiki as a Technology of Convergence: Developing a Consensus-Based Definition of Information Technology" as a first step toward building definitional consensus.
Between 2004 and 2007, Manimegalai M Subramaniam and I co-authored several papers examining the extent to which the curricula of IT educational programs matched the skills, knowledge and abilities needed for work practices performed by the information technology workforce. The first paper was presented at the ACM SIGITE 2004 in Salt Lake City and included in the conference proceedings. "Defining the Information Technology Workforce from the Educational Perspectives: A Pilot Study" examined syllabi and course descriptions of four year IT degree programs in the United States. A second paper, delivered at the nternational Conference on Technology, Knowledge and Society in Berkeley, California, "Designing a Global Classification System for the Information Technology Workforce (ITWF): Examining Cultural and Societal Bias" (2005), compared syllabi and course descriptions from programs in the U.S. and India.
Undergraduate information technology programs are found in a variety of disciplines, among them library and information studies. Laurie J. Bonnici and I examined the interaction between the accreditation of undergraduate information technology programs and that of graduate programs in information studies in "Contested Terrain: Accreditation and the Future of the Profession of Librarianship." This article was published in Library Quarterly, one of the two most respected journals in the field. In a forthcoming article Laurie J. Bonnici, Manimegalai M Subramaniam and I will further examine evidence of shifting definitions and their influence on disciplinary and professional identity.
In 2006, I began more directly to pursue my interest in women's participation in the information technology workforce. In a project entitled When Small Worlds Don't Overlap, Or Why Aren't Latinas Participating in the U.S. Information Technology Workforce? I compare the normative behaviors that characterize IT workplaces and IT degree programs with those of Hispanic communities. I presented a paper introducing this project at the Association of the Internet Researchers' annual conference IR 7.0 in Brisbane, Australia in September 2006. The paper was published in the conference proceedings. In February 2007, I was awarded a COFRS grant by the Florida State University Council on Research and Creativity to fund an ethnographic study as part of this research. In October 2007, I presented a paper at the Association of Internet Researchers'annual conference Internet Research 8.0 in Vancouver, Canada, "Against the Norm: The Role of the Internet in the Decisions of Five Latinas to Pursue Careers in Information Technology." This paper analyzes the responses of five Latinas in senior IT management positions to questions regarding their access to and use of the Internet. I plan to submit three articles in Fall 2008 following completion of the analysis of the data collected as part of this project.
In 2008, Gary Burnett, Paul Jaeger (Maryland) and I applied for a National Science Foundation Research on Gender in Science and Engineering (GSE) grant to extend this work to the development of a comprehensive national survey that will examine whether the differences in women's participation by race and ethnicity may be explained by differences in the normative behaviors of the communities in which they grow up and live. Although the project was not funded, the reviewer's comments were encouraging, and we plan to resubmit in 2009.
In 2008, Gary Burnett, Michelle Kazmer (PI), Paul Marty, Lorri Mon, Besiki Stvilia and I applied for a National Science Foundation Virtual Organizations as Sociotechnical System grant to identify and understand how long-term scientific production and innovation are supported by projects in which scientists come together from disparate locations and institutions for intensive periods of collaborative activity to conduct experiments requiring the use of specialized facilities.
If funded, this study will afford me the opportunity to extend use of the FIT method to the analysis of online interactions outside of the educational context. In addition, I will be responsible for analysis of race, ethnicity, gender and disciplinarity factors.