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Title: Informal Mentoring of Adolescents about Computing: Relationships, Roles, Qualities, and Impact
Influencing adolescent interest in computing is key to engaging diverse teens in computer science learning. Prior work suggests that informal mentorship may be a powerful way to trigger and maintain interest in computing, but we still know little about how mentoring relationships form, how mentors trigger and maintain interest, or what qualities adolescents value in informal mentors. In a 3-week career exploration class with 18 teens from underrepresented groups, we had students write extensively about their informal computing mentors. In analyzing their writing, we found that most teens had informal computing mentors, that mentors were typically teachers, friends, and older siblings (and not parents or school counselors), and that what teens desired most were informal mentors that were patient, helpful, inspiring, and knowledgeable. These findings suggest that computing mentors can come in many forms, that they must be patient, helpful, and inspiring, but that they also require content knowledge about computing to be meaningful. Future work might explore what knowledge of computing is sufficient to empower teachers, parents, peers, and family to be effective computing mentors.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1735123
NSF-PAR ID:
10107746
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
Page Range / eLocation ID:
598 to 603
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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