iPads, MakerEd and More in Education

In the 10 months since Girls Who Code announced a set of policy recommendations aimed at closing the gender gap in K-12 computer science, the national nonprofit has been working with states to promote legislation that would help measure the extent of the gender disparity in U.S. classrooms.

On Wednesday, Washington became the first state to get on board with Girls Who Code’s policy agenda when Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, signed into law a bill written with the expressed intention of closing the gender gap in computer science fields.

Mathematicians and scientists are socially awkward men who wear glasses—at least, according to children.

In several studies, when children were asked to draw a mathematician or scientist, girls were twice as likely to draw men as they were to draw women, while boys almost universally drew men, often in a lab coat. I decided to try this out at home with my 12-year-old son, who said, “Really anyone can be a mathematician, but this is your average one,” and promptly sketched a man in a checked oxford shirt with a pocket protector.

Persistent, subconscious images of male mathematicians and scientists that start at the earliest ages may be one explanation why girls enter STEM fields—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—at dramatically lower rates than boys.