Investigating Women's Learning Experiences in Computing Through the Lens of Schlossberg's Transition Theory

This paper reviews the application of Schlossberg's transition theory in understanding the learning experiences of women in computing. Computing education communities have been consistently exploring approaches and strategies to increase the participation of underrepresented groups. Even though efforts are being made, it remains challenging to address the shortage of highly skilled computing professionals, and gender disparities still persist. A primary goal in computing education is to attract and engage with this historically minoritized population to retain them in the field for long-term contributions. In this pursuit, we propose reviewing Schlossberg's transition theory in the context of women in computing education to understand how to improve their learning experiences and improve their long-term engagement. Transition theory examines how individuals identify with and adapt to a changing situation in their personal and professional lives. In this study, we focus on non-computing women, those who have earned bachelor's degrees in non-computing fields but wish to change their career directions to computing after completing their undergraduate education. We argue that non-computing women have deferred interests in computing, so they leverage these learning experiences to facilitate their computing career transition. It is important to investigate non-computing women's learning experiences to gain a comprehensive understanding of how they navigate the transition process. Schlossberg's transition theory, originally developed for adult education and career counseling, provides a framework to guide our inquiry into women's interpretations of computing career transitions and for determining which resources are best suited to support them during the process. This paper seeks to synthesize relevant literature on Schlossberg's transition theory in engineering and computing education, focusing on the underrepresentation of women in computing. It explores broadening the application of Schlossberg's transition theory by applying it to the study of non-computing women to inquire into how it can help disrupt gender disparities in computing education. Our discussion of Schlossberg's transition theory also demonstrates how this theory is appropriate to study the non-computing women's career transition in computing and outlines future studies that can further the discoveries in engineering and computing education research.