Teaching Coding Inclusively

Olivia Guest & Samuel H. Forbes

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State of the field

• Coding has an image problem at best, a sexism problem at worst
• Many tropes exist: eg the “Male Geek” trope
• Yet increasingly in science coding is at least useful, if not necessary
• This can lead to unequal outcomes

The beginnings

• Women were the first coders but in many cases have been erased from the history of the field
• Children’s perceptions of coding for example often feature men (and dare we ask about LLMs)
• In more feminised fields coding has been considered less important (compared to say AI)

Breakdown

• In AI research 1 in 4 authors were women (and fewer in senior or first author)
• In psychology it is closer to 75% - 80% female (and more exaggerated in developmental psychology than say neuroscience)
• Is coding really useful in psychology?

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Coding in psychology

• Yes but is it strictly necessary
• No, but it is used in stats, design, data management, computational modelling etc.
• Psychologists who can code often have an advantage on job market, more opportunities for authorship etc
• Because of the tropes and the way it is taught, this is often gendered

Diminishing what people do

• We often downplay things when they become more popular with women:
• Puzzle games or often not thought to be true coding games
• HTML is not a “real” coding language
• More recently, R is not “real” coding

So who can code?

The upshot

• When we minimize contributions is it any wonder we diminish the enjoyment of coding?
• This of course leads to less exposure to coding, and less feeling that anyone excluded can ever belong
• We reinforce this – “xxx has been coding since they were 7”
• This is seen not as a pedagogical challenge but a failure of the student!

As a developmental psychologist…

• Sometimes in development there are critical periods
• Coding is not a core developmental skill
• There are no critical windows here!

What does this look like in the classroom?

• Avoid only catering to the most experienced students!
• If someone is ahead and bored, why not have them learn about the history of the field for example from an EDI perspective?
• Check demographics of attrition
• Never assume good evals mean we are doing our job well. What are we doing and for whom?

What does this look like in the classroom?

• Avoid pretending sexism, racism etc is absent
• It can be useful to address problems with the field up front and discuss why it is
• Think about framings such as imposter syndrome
• It’s useful to show that students shouldn’t feel behind, but we need to do so in a way that avoids victim blaming. The structural imbalances are out there.

What does this look like in the classroom?

• Show humility as a teacher
• It can be really instructive for students not to see the instructor as a genius who knows it all, but rather another person working their way through it
• Avoid code challenges
• Competition can be fun, but it is somewhat rarely pedagogically useful. Empower students to care about each others learning

Remember: showing up matters!