Abstract
The software development sector is rapidly expanding. It generates vast revenues whether categorised under ICT or creative industries. It has a capacity to support national economic growth and is supportive of economic development. Despite such opportunity, the poor and disadvantaged are often excluded from access to and participation in this sector. In light of this context, our paper comprises a first step in a project aiming to offer software development classes to disadvantaged youth in Bali, Indonesia. To guide construction of the curriculum, we review publically available online literature around current practice in the provision of non-formal education-based programming classes to the disadvantaged. We wanted to know what might constrain disadvantaged students from participation in this field, what as a consequence might be their response to educational opportunities for this field, and what might be needed to provide ‘agentic’ learning experiences. We also wanted to evaluate the suitability of Bourdieu’s Social Reproduction Theory in terms of reading this literature and providing a broad level framing to guide initial thinking about curriculum construction in response to these questions. This paper presents findings from our review of the online publically available literature and argues the value of Social Reproduction Theory to understanding current practice and guiding preliminary thinking around curriculum construction.
Highlights
Employment websites reveal high demand for those with information communications technology (ICT) skills
We argue with reference to the online literature around current practice, that Social Reproduction Theory adequately accounts for existing practice and as such it will be valuable to our project
This paper aims to provide an informed basis for initial reflection upon constructing a coding curriculum for socio-economically disadvantaged youth at a non-formal education setting in rural Bali, Indonesia
Summary
Employment websites reveal high demand for those with information communications technology (ICT) skills. On 7 November 2017, the software Development category at the seek.com (2017a), for example, sat comfortably within the top ten in terms of job vacancies in a list of approximately 50 categories. At https://www.seek.com.au/ where software development is located in the ICT category, it ranked highest, offering over three times the number of jobs as second ranked category, construction. The strength of the field continues in the relationship between growth in the ICT and software development sector and regional and national economic growth; a relationship which mostly holds even for ‘developing’ countries, with India perhaps as the best example (Arora and Gambardella 2008; 2005). We refer to Bali which despite association with ‘paradise’ and a tourism industry attracting millions of tourists, remains very much a third-world contexts inscribed by socio-economic disadvantage (Sapsuwan 2014; The Bali Times 2012a; Surbakti 2012). A disposition towards employment in software development is not developed or maintained when there are more pressing short-term needs (Marinos 2016; Kayser 2013)
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