Co-designing a contextualised outreach initiative to attract females into computer science : a Change Laboratory with a school-university partnership

Redmond, Fiona and Bligh, Brett (2025) Co-designing a contextualised outreach initiative to attract females into computer science : a Change Laboratory with a school-university partnership. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

The underrepresentation of females in computer science has prompted numerous outreach initiative designs and design principles, yet much of this work overlooks the role of local context and stakeholder collaboration in designing these programmes. While the literature highlights strategies like early exposure, short-term interventions, and specialised curricula, it often lacks a clear understanding of how these approaches can be adapted to meet unique community needs. My research addresses this shortcoming by documenting the development of a local, contextualised initiative and examining how contributions from different stakeholders shaped a design that directly addressed challenges within a given practice context. This approach offers insights into promoting sustained female engagement in computer science through co-designed initiatives. This project is built on an existing university-school partnership, leveraging it as a foundation for co-design efforts. Using a Change Laboratory approach, I facilitated workshops where stakeholders collaboratively designed an outreach programme aimed at increasing female participation in computer science, tailored to the local school’s needs, resources and culture, alongside a complementary university activity system. The outreach programme was designed using activity theory and Engeström’s expansive learning cycle, identifying and addressing challenges specific to the local context. Data sources for the analysis include workshop recordings, artefacts created during sessions, and reflective diary entries, which are analysed to trace the design’s evolution and provide an account of how collaborative design enables contextually relevant outreach. Findings reveal that the collaborative design process led to a proposed progressive three-year curriculum aimed at fostering continuous engagement in computing. Stakeholders prioritised a structure delivered by familiar schoolteachers that includes site visits and mentorship, progressively building students’ skills and confidence. This structure was proposed to foster a sense of belonging considered essential for sustained interest, to address local resource gaps and challenge gender stereotypes, promoting local ownership and responsiveness. The design emerged from stakeholders identifying and seeking to address local contradictions, such as the need for sustained engagement beyond one-off events, guiding the development of mentorship and progressive skill-building to strengthen students’ experience and confidence over time. This research makes a range of contributions to the literature on outreach to promote female participation in computer science, offering insights into linking early exposure with long-term support and integrating progressive curricula that offers comprehensive computing education aligned with students' specific interests. By providing evidence of how identifying contradictions can inform sustainable, responsive programmes, this study highlights the value of context-specific interventions. Emphasising the collaborative design process, it demonstrates the value of bringing together diverse stakeholders to create culturally relevant outreach initiatives that respond to specific contextual needs, potentially supporting greater engagement and inclusivity in computing.