A critical research synthesis of privilege in computing education

Privilege is an unearned, unasked-for advantage gained because of the way society views an aspect of a student's identity, such as race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, and language. Privilege may provide advantages to some students, and under-privileged students may face unfair barriers to success in education. We review and analyze existing research on privilege in STEM and computing with a focus on identifying privilege and inequality and noting and measuring the impact of privilege and underprivilege. There is more literature on privilege in the broader fields of general and STEM education than in computing education, so we use the superset to identify gaps in our understanding of privilege in computing education. We conclude with research questions that emerge from the gaps in the literature.

I. An Introduction To Privilege

“Ultimately, Carlos pinpointed the unfairness of the system, and in doing so, addressed one of the core reasons we explored this topic in the first place: ‘You could have a really smart person who doesn't have any money, or has the potential to be really smart and all that, but because of lack of money they can't get up to the same level as somebody else with the same IQ or whatever, just living in a richer neighborhood. ‘