Suscripción a Biblioteca: Guest
Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering

Publicado 6 números por año

ISSN Imprimir: 1072-8325

ISSN En Línea: 1940-431X

SJR: 0.514 SNIP: 0.875 CiteScore™:: 2.4 H-Index: 27

Indexed in

PATHWAYS TO COMPUTER SCIENCE AT COMMUNITY COLLEGE: SINGLE MOTHERS AS RETURNING STUDENTS

Volumen 28, Edición 4, 2022, pp. 51-68
DOI: 10.1615/JWomenMinorScienEng.2021037076
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SINOPSIS

Focusing on adult women (re-)entering college to study computer science is one avenue to broadening participation in computing, and community college computer science departments are primed to take advantage of this population of overlooked students. One understudied group is single mothers who are studying computer science with the intention of transfer and completion of a bachelor's degree in preparation for entering a computing career. Social cognitive career theory describes the social cognitive process by which individuals gain interests and make career-based decisions, and we used this framework as a guide in a single case study to answer the research question, How does a returning single mother experience community college as a step on a pathway with a goal of a bachelor's degree in computer science and entry into a computing job? To answer this question, we analyzed data from an interview and a follow-up message exchange with a 28-year-old white female single parent who was attending a community college in California at the time of the study. Findings from this study demonstrate that women returning to college to study computer science can experience high self-efficacy and outcome expectations. Implications from this work suggest that college departments could trumpet the salaries and availability of computing jobs to attract returning female students, emphasizing those careers that are prosocial. These students may be adopted as leaders, counted upon to ask questions that younger students are too afraid to verbalize, and to run college organizations focused on computing majors and careers.

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