Tinkering and gender in end-user programmers' debugging

Putting the gender back in digital housekeeping

“…While there is some discussion of the gendered nature of engagement with technology in homes [3,5,36] digital housekeeping, gender has been a carefully sidestepped (perhaps even taboo?) topic.…”

“…Prior research demonstrates the importance of self-efficacy to gaining proficiency in technical domains such as end-user programming [5] is core to understanding End-User Programming because of its link to tinkering. "Females should be encouraged to tinker because it helps them to be effective, with the important caveat that tinkering in a complex environment carries a risk of damaging the females' self-efficacy" [5]. Self-efficacy as defined by Beckwith measures an individual's confidence, an internal cognitive state, making it a difficult characteristic or trait to assess [5].…”

“…"Females should be encouraged to tinker because it helps them to be effective, with the important caveat that tinkering in a complex environment carries a risk of damaging the females' self-efficacy" [5]. Self-efficacy as defined by Beckwith measures an individual's confidence, an internal cognitive state, making it a difficult characteristic or trait to assess [5]. Appearance of confidence may differ from internal, experienced confidence as we have the ability to pretend that we feel differently than we really do.…”

Attitudes and self-efficacy in young adults' computing autobiographies

“…Hundreds of similar systems have similar goals, with varying degrees of success [14]. Beckwith et al studied the influence of tool design on self-efficacy in these types of programming environment, revealing that the design of computing tools can affect self-efficacy in subtle (and genderspecific) ways [3]. Blackwell's attention investment model, which proposes concepts of risk and reward perception, is also related to self-efficacy, in that both operationalize peoples' beliefs in their ability to acquire new skills [5].…”

Children as Unwitting End-User Programmers

“…They were offered toys, played with them, broke them, fixed them, and modified them. The means of play was programming, but the unwitting programming was undertaken as tinkering [1] with an existing artifact.…”