6.4 THE SOCIOLOGY OF GROUPS

American sociologists have recently come to focus more and more on groups that are perceived to be in a position of social disadvantage. Racial minorities, women, and those from lower socioeconomic strata are the primary examples. The sociological questions raised in the study of disadvantaged groups include: How do such groups come to be identified as having special, unequal status? What forms of discrimination do they face? How are attitudes about their status formed, and how do these change among the population at large? And what social or organizational policies may unwittingly contribute to their disadvantaged status? Because these groupings of race, gender, and class are so central to discussions of education in American society, and because there are ways that each intersects with educational technology, they will serve as the framework for the discussion that follows.

For each of these groups, there is a set of related questions of concern to us here. First, assuming that we wish to sustain a democratic society that values equity, equal opportunity, and equal treatment under law, are we currently providing equal access to educational technology in schools? Second, when we do provide access, are we providing access to the same kinds of experiences? In other words, are the experiences of males and females in using technology in schools of roughly comparable quality? Does one group or the other suffer from bias in content of the materials with which they are asked to work, or in the types of experiences to which they are exposed? Third, are there differing perspectives on the use of the technology that are particular to one group or the other? The genders, for example, may in fact experience the world differently, and therefore their experiences with educational technology may be quite different. And finally, so what? That is, is it really important that we provide equality of access to educational technology, bias-free content, etc., or are these aspects of education ultimately neutral in their actual impact on an individual's life chances?

6.4.1 Minority Groups

The significance of thinking about the issue of access to education in terms of racial groupings was underlined in studies beginning with the 1960s. Coleman's (1966) landmark study on the educational fate of American school children from minority backgrounds led to a continuing struggle to desegregate and integrate American schools, a struggle that continues. Coleman's findings--that African-American children were harmed academically by being taught in predominantly minority schools, and that Caucasian children were not harmed by being in integrated schools--provided the basic empirical justification for a whole series of federal, state, and local policies encouraging racial integration and seeking to abolish de facto segregation. This struggle continues, though in a different vein. As laws and local policies abolished de facto forms of segregated education, and access was guaranteed, the need to provide fully valuable educational experiences became more obvious.

6.4.1.1. Minorities and Access to Educational Technology. The issue of minority access to educational technology was not a central issue before the advent of computers in the early 1980s. While there were a few studies that explicitly sought to introduce minority kids to media production techniques (e.g., Culkin, 1965; Schwartz, 1987; Worth & Adair, 1972), the issue did not seem a critical one. The appearance of computers' however, brought a significant change. Not only did the machines represent a higher level of capitalization of the educational enterprise than had formerly been the case, they also carried a heavier symbolic load than had earlier technologies, being linked in the public mind with images of a better future, greater economic opportunity for children, and so forth. Each of these issues led to problems vis-à-vis minority access to computers.

Initial concerns about the access of minorities to new technologies in schools were raised in Becker's studies (1983), which seemed to show not only that children in poor schools (schools where a majority of the children were from low-socioeconomic-status family backgrounds) had fewer computers available to them but also that the activities they were typically assigned by teachers featured rote memorization via use of simple drill-and-practice programs, whereas children in schools with a wealthier student base were offered opportunities to learn programming and to work with more flexible software.

This pattern was found to be less strong in a follow-up set of studies conducted a few years later (Becker, 1986), but it has continued to be a topic of considerable concern. Perhaps school administrators and teachers became concerned and changed their practices, or perhaps there were simply more computers in the schools a few years later, allowing broader access. Nonetheless, other evidence of racial disparities in access to computing resources in schools was collected by Doctor (1991), who noted continuing disparities. In 1992, the popular computer magazine Macworld (Borrell, 1992; Kondracke, 1992; Piller, 1992) devoted an issue (headlined "America's Shame") to these questions, noting critically that this topic seemed to have slipped out of the consciousness of many of those in the field of educational technology, and raising in a direct way the issue of the relationship (or lack of one) between government policy on school computer use and the continuing discrepancies in minority access (see also 9.5.5).

If the issue of minority access to computing resources was not a high priority in the scholarly journals, it did receive a good deal of attention at the level of federal agencies, foundations, state departments of education, and local school districts. States such as Kentucky (Pritchard, 1991), Minnesota (McInerney & Park, 1986), New York (Webb, 1986), and a group of southern states (David, 1987), all identified the question of minority access to computing resources as an important priority. Additionally, national reports and foundation conferences focused attention on the issue in the context of low minority representation in math and science fields generally (Cheek, 1991; Kober, 1991). Madaus (1991) made a particular plea regarding the

increasing move towards high-stakes computerized testing and its possible negative consequences for minority students.

The issue for the longer term may well be how educational technology interacts with the fundamental problem of providing not merely access but also a lasting and valuable education, something many minority children are clearly not receiving at present. The actual outcomes from use of educational technology in education may be less critical here than the symbolic functions of involvement of minorities with the hardware and software of a new era, and the value for life and career chances of their learning the language associated with powerful new forms of "social capital." We shall have occasion to return to this idea again below as part of the discussion of social class.

6.4.1.2. Gender

6.4.1.2. 1. Gender and Technology. With the rise of the women's movement, and in reaction to the perceived "male bias" of technology generally, technology's relationship to issues of gender is one that has been explored increasingly in recent years. One economic analysis describes the complex interrelationship among technology, gender, and social patterns in homes during this century. Technological changes coincided with a need to increase the productivity of household labor. As wages rose, it became more expensive for women to remain at home, out of the workforce, and labor-saving technology, even though expensive, became more attractive, at first to upper-middle-class women, then to all. The simple awareness of technology's effects was enough, in this case, to bring about significant social changes (Day, 1992). Changes in patterns of office work by women have also been intensively considered by sociologists (Kraft & Siegenthaler, 1989; see also 1.12, 10.4).

6.4.1.2.2. Gender and Education. Questions of how boys' and girls' experiences in school differ have come to be a topic of serious consideration. Earlier assertions that most differences were the result of social custom or lack of appropriate role models have been called into question by the work of Gilligan and her colleagues (Gilligan, 1982; Gilligan, Ward & Taylor, 1988) which finds distinctive differences in how the sexes approach the task of learning in general, and faults a number of instructional approaches in particular (see also 9.5.4).

6.4.1.2.3. Gender and Access to Technology in Schools. Several scholars have raised the question of how women are accommodated in a generally male-centric vision of how educational technology is to be used in schools (Becker, 1986; Damarin, 199 1; Kerr, 1990b; Turkle, 1984). In Particular, Becker's surveys (1983, 1986) found that girls tended to use computers differently, focusing more on such activities as word processing and collaborative work, while boys liked game playing and competitive work. Similar problems were noted by Dumdell and Lightbody (1993), Kerr (I 990b), Lage (199 1), Nelson and Watson (199 1), and Nye (1991). Specific strategies to reduce the effect of gender differences in classrooms have been proposed (Neuter, 1986). The issue has also been addressed through national and international surveys of computer education practices and policies (Reinen & Plomp, 1993; Kirk, 1992).

There is much good evidence that males and females differ both in terms of amount of computer exposure in school and in terms of the types of technology-based activities they typically choose to undertake. Some studies (Ogletree & Williams, 1990) suggest that prior experience with computers may determine interest and depth of involvement with computing by the time a student gets to higher grade levels. In fact, we are likely too close to the issues to have an accurate reading at present; the roles and expectations of girls in schools are changing, and different approaches are being tried to deal with the problems that exist. There have been some questions raised about the adequacy of the research methods used to unpack these key questions. Kay (1992), for example, found that scales and construct definitions were frequently poorly handled. Ultimately, the more complex issue of innate differences in social experience and ways of perceiving and dealing with the world will be extraordinarily difficult to unknot empirically, especially given the fundamental importance of initial definitions and the shifting social and political context in which these questions are being discussed.

Nonetheless, the question of how males and females define their experiences with technology will continue to be an important one. Ultimately, the most definitive factor here may turn out to be changes in the surrounding society and economy. As women increasingly move into management positions in business and industry, and as formerly "feminine" approaches to the organization of economic life (team management styles, collaborative decision making) are gradually reflected in technological approaches and products (computer-supported collaborative work, "groupware"), these perspectives and new approaches will gradually make their way into schools as well.

6.4.2 Social Class

Surprisingly little attention has been paid to the issue of social class differences in American education. Perhaps this is because Americans tend to think of their society as "classless," or that all are "members of the middle class." Despite some current thinking that suggests the continuing importance of class as a defining variable in American society, class and issues of access to education based on class considerations are little analyzed.

6.4.2.1. Class and Access to Educational Technology. Only one study identified for this review addressed directly the question of access to computer technology and social class. Persell and Cookson (1987) found that computer knowledge represents a "new form of cultural capital," and that faculty and administration at elite boarding schools, in adopting new technologies, tend to think less about instructional uses and more about the need to master new technologies as a general strategy for social reproduction and protection of their own class interests.

6.4.2.1.1. Access to Information Under New Social Conditions. If social class has been little studied, there have nonetheless been serious concerns raised about equity in access to information more generally under the new kinds of conditions that computerized information services make possible. For example, Kerr (1983) noted that certain kinds of information became less accessible when print based information was transformed into electronic form, a concern also raised by Schiller (1976, 198 1). While de Sola Pool (1983) saw the spread of new systems for information dissemination and retrieval as encouraging democracy, Doctor (1992) was concerned about existing and predicted problems in making such systems available to residents of rural areas, as well as the poor, minorities, the elderly, and the disabled.

Questions such as these are ultimately questions of policy and values. Will we be willing to pay More for services so that those less fortunate can have access at reduced or no cost? Will schools be given special access privileges if the information superhighway is eventually built? There are no answers at present, but these are significant issues that bear further examination.