Gender Issues in Technology Education: A Quasi- Ethnographic Interview Approach

In 1999, my study of “Cross-Gender Interactions in Technology Education” was published in the Journal of Technology Education (Haynie, 1999). It reported survey findings on “how professionals in technology education feel about certain issues concerning cross-gender interaction in technology education and whether or not men and women differ on those issues” (p. 28). The study purported itself as an attempt to open a new line of inquiry and admitted that, taken alone, it was merely a beginning. My hope was that other researchers would follow that survey with studies of different designs to provide the triangulation required to draw supportable conclusions from qualitative research. I hoped that those researchers would be well versed in the techniques of qualitative research. This has not occurred. Not satisfied to assume that this lack of action meant there are no problems to study, and feeling that failure to proceed was not good for the health of our profession, I decided to take the next step. Since I had previously conducted only quantitative (and mostly experimental) research, I began some independent study about appropriate methods for follow-up studies to the 1999 work. This paper reports the findings of a quasi-ethnographic interview approach conducted in 2002. It is tempered with my own purposeful observations since 1966. Since reference and comparisons are made to findings from the 1999 survey, the triangulation provided here is from three perspectives: survey, interview, and personal observation.