Background and Context: A continued gender disparity has driven a need for effective interventions for recruiting girls to computer science. Prior research has demonstrated that middle school girls hold beliefs and attitudes that keep them from learning computer science, which can be mitigated through classroom design. Objective: This study…

Like other STEM fields, computer science (CS) lacks representation of minorities, such as Black and Hispanic individuals, both in the number of bachelor's degrees obtained and the number of individuals in the CS workforce. Out-of-school CS programs are often designed with the intent to inspire young people to pursue careers in CS. Much of this…

Stereotypes people hold about computer scientists contribute to underrepresentation in computer science. Perceptions of computer scientists have historically been linked to males and a "nerd" culture, which can lead to lack of interest, particularly for girls. This article presents two studies conducted with two groups of middle…

Global protests and civil unrest in 2020 has renewed the world's interest in addressing injustice due to structural racism and oppression toward Black and Latinx people in all aspects of society, including computing. In this article, we argue that to address and repair the harm created by institutions, policies, and practices that have…

Students from underrepresented populations--females, working class, and youth from marginalized racial/ethnic groups--are less likely than their middle-class Asian and White male peers to study computer science (CS) in college. The dearth of CS undergraduates from these groups contributes to projected labor force shortages. Sources of the dilemma…

The gender gap in computing has persisted--and grown--over the past 40 years. One class of solutions offered as a way to close the gap are software and hardware design tools created for girls. This study compares one such construction kit--the Adafruit Flora--to a comparable kit that was not designed with girls in mind--the Arduino Leonardo. Using…

Some women have various misconceptions about technology careers. Some of them think that one has to be a geek in order to become a computer scientist. When the Women in Computing Group at Indiana University (WIC@IU) was looking for ideas on how to increase the number of women in computing majors at IU, the authors realized that women were turning…