Sequential Programming Instruction and Gender Differences

Serious concern about the differences that exist between the performance of female and male students in mathematics, science, and by extension, information technology (IT), has led researchers to attempt to identify why female students have inferior performance. This paper first reviews the relevant literature in order to isolate the age group in which the difference is most prevalent, and then identifies the learning strategies that seem to cause the largest difference. The results of students taking a second-year college theoretical mathematical course are then compared to those of students in a third-year college IT course, so as to explain why female students performed better in the mathematical course than in the IT course. Possible causes for the differences are isolated to inform the learning strategy that has subsequently been adopted for the IT course. The main difference between the courses was predicted to be that students may have not been aware of all that was expected of them or that they needed guidance to overcome initial obstacles faced in learning programming. Statistical analysis of the results reveals that female student distributions among the different grade sectors are positively affected by the new approach. Results are applicable to theories of pedagogy of teaching information technology courses.