Gender in education has received considerable attention in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education in the past decades. A concern is the lack of diversity in the student population, e.g. the under-representation of women in western STEM education. Research in technology and engineering education suggests that what it means to know and engage in technology is “co-produced” together with hegemonic masculinity (Ottemo 2015). This “masculine orientation” in engineering has been addressed in research for at least four decades (Ottemo, Berge and Silfver 2020). The culture of science is repeatedly found to be aligned with social norms of white, middle-class, heterosexual men (Avraamidou and Schwartz 2021). STEM education seems to reproduce social identities, e.g. gender, and power relations. 

Participation and representation in STEM education has increasingly been approached through theories of identity, which bring into attention the interplay between social structures and agency (Danielsson et al 2023). Until today, identity research draws predominantly on theories from psychology and socio-cultural theories of learning and becoming (Danielsson et al 2023). Intersectionality is seen as important and approached by considering several social identity categories, through so called “additive identities” (e.g. students being a women + black + low income) (Avraamidou 2020). The political dimension of identity constructions is under-studied, as has been argued by Chronaki and Kollosche (2019). 

In this paper, we explore the construction of identity in and through education as political (contested) and queer addressing critiques of existing work that explores gender and technology as stable. A prominent finding is that science and technology is positioned around gendered dichotomies, as rational, objective, reductionist or technical rather than empathetic, embracing subjective experience, as well as complex societal questions (eg. Ottemo, Berge, Silfver 2020). These positions are mapped on to the gender binaries (male / female) as stable categories thereby contributing to reproducing traditional understandings of gender and separation (Landström 2007). By conceiving identity construction as queer and political, we seek to contribute with alternative understandings of identity, which we, by empircal examples show to also exist in the classroom.

We draw on Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985/2001) discourse framework to study identity as political and queer. Laclau and Mouffe argue that the subject emerges only once it cannot constitute its social position in or through existing social positions or discourses. In those “political moments”, the individual is in a position to alter existing configurations of meaning and power.

We illustrate identity construction as political analysing data collected in an ethnographic study in two subsequent courses in technology education, more specifically computing education, i.e. education about digital technologies and their development. We ask the following research questions:

1. What gender and technology identity discourses are being produced?

2. What discourses gain status, i.e. what power relations are being produced through social interaction?

3. How are identities and power structures being challenged in political acts of identification?

The research has been conducted as a follow-up study to a longitudinal interview study (anonymous) that suggests that students give up their broader interests in society, art or politics and instead adapt to becoming a seemingly narrow-minded programmer who identifies with solving well-defined technical problems through program code. Some students struggle to adapt to this presumably masculine way of engaging in IT. The aim with this follow-up ethnographic study was to get a deeper understanding of social constructions of computing and gender in the classroom. 

The ethnographic study (Gobo and Molle 2017) was conducted in two courses at a swedish university, over a period of one and a half semesters. The students are in their second year of study of computer science or IT engineering. The first course is a large programming course running over a whole semester, the amount of credits corresponding to two thirds of full time studies. The second course on user-dentred system design follows the programming course. It introduces the students to human, societal, or ethical aspects of technology development. The first programming course has a reputation of being the best course with one of the best teachers. A longitudinal study (anonymous) suggests that this course has a great impact on the students, who align to ways of being and doing that are produced in the course. The second course has been questioned by students. Several teachers have developed the course to increase the students interest. The courses seem to differ in that they embrace the technical and social, human, in different ways and as such incorporate tensions that the teachers and students may meet with political acts of identification. The first author collected field notes. In the first course, she participated in 10 hours of lectures, 15 hours of labs and 1 hour outside the exam hall, talking to the students after the exam. In the second course, she participated in 7 hours of lectures, 1 hour of seminar, 1 hour of labs, 1,5 hours of project meetings, as well as 1 hour of final project presentation. The field notes and data such as lecture slides, assignments, course evaluations were transferred to Atlas.Ti. The analysis was mostly done by the first author, but also jointly with the second author. The data analysis consisted of three steps: Step 1: Open Coding on identity in relationship to the content of computing education. We looked for ways of being, knowing, and practicing (identity construction) that were offered through the teacher and social interaction. Step 2: Analysis of identity discourses and relationships among them. The identification of discourses is analytically made by focusing on paradoxes, contradictions, or tensions in the ways (patterns) of being and knowing as they are performed, performed and recognised. Step 3: Exploring alternative constitutions of identity once discourses of identity and relations of dominance are identified. As a part of this, we interrogate binary constructions of identity in these discourses.

We see and interrogate the positioning of computing as technical, rational, centring around gaining control over machines (cf Faukner 2001, Ottemo et al 2020). Being a programmer is associated to being a nerd by the celebrated teacher in the first course who introduces himself as a nerd and programming as a nerdy thing. The nerd image of computing is seen as one reason for the absence of women (Faukner 2001). Also, the benefit of programming for humanity is questioned by the programming teacher. However, the ways the teacher performs being a nerd and doing programming also challenges existing understandings of identity. The teacher performs the identity of being a nerd as being in close, bodily, affective relationship with the computer, in which he (a question is if he is identifying as male in this instance) is both subject and object in relation to the computer. The human is involved with both body and mind. This queers our understanding of the distinction of human and computer and also our understanding of gender being co-produced with technology in education. The teacher advocates low-level programming that involves manipulating and knowing the machine (human as subject) and also being shaped in thoughts and feelings by the machine (human as object). In many lectures, the teacher is programming in class. At one time, he writes a code snippet that he admits not even programmers can understand. He explains this is “not to make macho points”. It is his way of thinking and expressing himself that evolved in the relationship with the computer. Focusing on the queer and political can give new understandings of gender in education, and new possibilities for developing equitable education. One could ask how to make the user and society more experiential, possibly building on the relationship to the computer.

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