Reflections on My Guiding Question:

I am sure I was not alone among my fellow Fulbrighters in feeling anxious as I tried to craft the perfect guiding question. Fortunately, an early piece of advice helped me think of a quality inquiry. The given advice encouraged me to explore a question that I have thought about many times with my own teaching, and I hoped that my international field experience would provide a unique insight that might help me formulate a useful solution. Not only did this prove to be true, but I also answered several other supporting questions I had.

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My Guiding Question: To what extent are female and rural students in Uruguay encouraged to enter and continue in STEM fields?

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Fortunately for me, a large part of my guiding question was answered within a few days of being in Uruguay! In Montevideo, we visited the headquarters of Ceibal, a government initiative to infuse educational technology into the Uruguayan school system. Plan Ceibal is a significant part of this goal, providing both laptops and connectivity to all school children in Uruguay. Having my master's in Educational Technology, I was elated to visit Ceibal and have a chance to answer MANY questions about ed tech in Uruguay!

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Among the different programs that provide digital content to students across the country and its strong teacher training programs, I was struck by the inclusiveness the program brought to the country. I saw this in three areas:

• Closing the Digital Divide: Uruguay has one of the most robust broadband networks in Latin America, including a sturdy fiber-optic network, numerous school-based and public Wi-Fi networks, and an expanding 5G mobile network. For students in rural departments with Ceibal-provided laptops, this translates into a direct line to multiple resources the school system and Ceibal have to offer. Students also reported to me that their families often use the laptops at home for other things besides school.

• Technology Curriculum in the K-6 Classroom: As part of the elementary curriculum, I noticed that schools offer different technology courses for each grade level, including a course called “Computational Thinking” - I wish my son’s school had this class! Other courses included basic computer skills, coding, and robotics. Since school is compulsory for all students in the country, this ensures that all students - both urban and rural, boys and girls - receive this technical training early on.

• Access to Academic and Technology Curriculum: All laptops include different programs for students to use; some programs are used for more academic practice in math or reading, and some have a technology focus, like coding or robotics programs.

 

In addition to these initiatives, Ceibal has created CeiLab, a kind of mobile maker-classroom. Teachers can submit a unit plan to Ceibal and, if approved, they can receive hardware and software to run a maker’s lab. I was able to see several of these labs in the classrooms, with very impressive products being created, especially in the high school courses.

 

Before I answer my guiding question, I would like to compare what I saw in Uruguay to what I know from my time as an educator in the U.S. I acknowledge that the U.S. is a big country, and that I cannot speak for the wide range of technology programs it has. I can speak for Florida, however, as both a teacher and parent. My sons do receive a laptop, a relatively new initiative that came after Plan Ceibal, though one-to-one technology programs have been tested in many parts of the country, not on a country-wide scale.

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As in Uruguay, the laptops at my son’s school are equipped with many educational programs. The laptops in my son’s classrooms are used mostly for academic purposes, and students have access to resources to improve skills in various areas. The difference is in both the access to connectivity and specific courses offered. Internet connectivity cannot be assumed for the students in Florida; this was made evident during the pandemic when school districts rushed to create solutions to the disparity in connectivity among its student population. Another difference is the access to technology courses in the classroom. Math and reading are given a large chunk of instructional time, and technology courses are offered as a sporadic elective.

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With this in mind, to what extent are female and rural students in Uruguay encouraged to enter and continue in STEM fields? Very much so! With students receiving consistent exposure to technology courses, and with access to laptops and consistent connectivity, technology is an embedded part of education for girls and rural students in grades K-6. CeiLabs are a bright point in the school system, though they do heavily depend on the teacher’s initiative to create a workable classroom unit.

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What happens after? A presenter early on in our trip informed us that male students in Uruguay electing to move on to technical careers were very high compared to females - similar to the percentage of American students. Where is the disconnect? I hypothesize that there could be a cultural view that math and science are more ‘boy’ topics, and as a result, boys are drawn to the field more than girls. It could also be due to the available technical jobs in Uruguay. These conjectures, of course, would require more research.

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What’s next? I would like to advocate for more required technology classes, both in elementary and secondary school. I am also puzzled why my school, a completely online school, only has robotics as a club! I feel a robotics or maker-type course would see good enrollment numbers, and if introduced early, before high school, it would see positive enrollment numbers. Overall, I enjoyed seeing how education technology is done in Uruguay, and I am excited to take and apply my lessons learned from my fieldwork to my own school and district.