CS 2910: Session 3: Diversity

1. Stereotype Threat
   • Awareness of a stereotype against you reduces your performance
     • Example: old people will do worse on memory tests if I ask their age or put them in a room with young people than if I do not remind them of their age.
   • Inhibitive: (almost) only reduces performance
   • Universal: known to apply to at least computing, golf, math, memory, math, writing
   • Easy to trigger: myth busting, room decorations, music, etc.
   • Not based on truth: I can make up a stereotype, teach it to you, and see the effect of stereotype threat.
2. Culture is our Enemy
   • There is an ambient message telling most demographies that computing is “not for them”
   • These can attack
     • Belonging - “don’t you feel out of place?”
     • Confidence - “you can’t compete with all those Xs…”
     • Identity - “we don’t do that”, “traitor”
   • Some students have counter-cultural leanings
     • See cultural repression as a challenge to be conquered
     • Mostly safe from diversity-repressing forces, but also not best role models for others…
3. Growth Mindset
   • Nature vs Nurture?

   • Fixed vs Growth mindset

     Fixed

     • Sees nature predominant
     • Wording like “gifted”, “you are good at”, “smart”
     • Tend to avoid challenges as potential evidence of lack of skill
     • Strongly influenced by opinions of others

     Growth

     • Sees nurture predominant
     • Wording like “experienced”, “worked hard”, “diligent”
     • Tend to embrace challenges as avenues for betterment
     • Weakly influenced by opinions of others

   • Evidence about nature vs nurture is mixed and inconclusive
   • Evidence about mindset of students and teachers clear
     • Growth mindset reduces impact of stereotype threat
     • Growth mindset increases learning and performance
     • True of both students and teachers
   • My pitch:
     • A personal trainer is hired to help every trainee bulk up, not to find the biggest people
     • You are cognitive personal trainers
4. Unequal prior experience playing field
   • Different cultures, genders, socio-economic backgrounds engage in different childhood activities
   • Some build more useful prior knowledge than others
   • Example: spatial reasoning
     • boys tend to play with more building toys than girls
     • building toys enhance ability to hold spatial information in the mind
     • large portions of CS are described using spatial analogy (call stack, binary tree, variable-as-box, program flow, …)
     • … giving average boy a leg up
     • solution: use manipulatives (e.g., physical stacks of paper to be the call stack, not just verbal “is on top of” that relies on student’s ability to hold a stack in their head).
   • Do not mistake experience for aptitude