Maria Knobelsdorf, University of Dortmund, Germany - Didaktik der ...

effect of different factors on the adoption of science education [6].
For instance, the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology
[18] and Social Cognitive Theory [2] are some of the most
widely applied theories in the context of students’ behavior [6]. In
addition, Confidence, Performance Expectancy, Social Influence,
Satisfaction, Self-Efficacy and Perceive Behavioral Control are
some of the most commonly used factors (i.e., [5, 6]) affecting
students’ intention to attend a respective course.
3. THE EDUCATIONAL CONTEXT
The empirical study was conducted in three Greek Lyceums (3 rd
grade), in classes of the 11 th and 12 th grade at two Bavarian (German)
Gymnasiums and in the Department of Informatics at Ionian
University in Corfu, Greece (1 st year). As there might be a substantial
influence of the specific educational context on our results,
we start with a short description of the school systems and
the differences of the CS education policies in the two regarded
countries. A very detailed description was presented recently by a
Working Group named: Computer Science/Informatics in Secondary
Education on the ITiCSE 2011 [13].
3.1 The Greek Lyceum
The 1 st grade of Greek Lyceum (Lykio), represents an orientation
year with a general education program. The 2 nd and 3 rd grades
offer three curricular directions: Theoretical, Scientific and Technological.
Students who follow the technological direction are
taking a specific course named Applications Development in a
Programming Environment (ADPE) that involves the development
of algorithms and programming. This course has been taught
for ten years. It focuses on the algorithmic approach and on the
development of problem-solving skills in a programming environment.
This subject is assigned to CS teachers.
The overall aim of 3 rd Lyceum programming courses is to develop
analytical and synthetic thinking, acquire methodological skills
and be able to solve simple problems within a programming environment.
This programming course has not been designed to
educate programmers, and for this reason it is not designed to
teach sophisticated programming techniques; it focuses on approaches
and techniques of problem solving with emphasis on
structured thinking. Many basic algorithmic and programming
concepts, such as conditions, expressions and logical reasoning,
are fundamentals of general knowledge and skills to be acquired
in general education.
The curriculum states that this subject must be taught (at least
partially) in a computer lab. The Ministry of Education has certified
specific Educational Software to support the lab work, especially
for the Lyceum programming course. The Educational
Software has been designed to support teaching, to complement
the subject's needs and IT use and to help students to consolidate
the material. The certified software includes an activity space, a
flow chart developer and a programming environment in accordance
with the textbook.
3.2 The Bavarian Gymnasium
The organization of the schools in Germany is different for each
of the 16 states. In the State of Bavaria, in which the survey was
conducted, secondary school starts with the 5 th grade. There are
three different types of secondary schools, which differ in their
orientation and their level of difficulty. The type of secondary
school that directly qualifies for the enrollment at universities is
called Gymnasium, where students spend a total of 8 years. Currently
about one third of all students in grade 8 attends the Gymnasium
[4].
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CS is a compulsory subject for all students of 6 th and 7 th grade at
Gymnasium. During this time, the students learn to apply objectoriented
modeling to standard software applications (office,
graphics, text processing, file management, hypertext structures,
e-mail) as well as to describe an simulate simple algorithms. To
this purpose, the students use commercial standard software systems
as well as custom-made software tools and programming
systems to solve simple problems applying the algorithmic control
structures.
Starting with 8 th grade, there are offered four different educational
directions at Gymnasium. In the scientific-technological direction
CS continues to be a compulsory subject in the 9 th and 10 th grade.
While programming skills are not very relevant for the 9 th grade –
it deals primarily with functional modeling and relational database
systems – the students in 10 th grade learn OOM and OOP (incl.
inheritance). Nevertheless, the training programming skills is not
the main focus, which lies on modeling competencies instead. The
teachers are free to decide about the programming language and
development environment the classes use, but they mostly agree
to chose Java and BlueJ.
In the last two grades (11 and 12) of Gymnasium, the so-called
qualification stage, the students learn in courses that they can
choose themselves, disregarding some subjects that are compulsory
(e.g. Mathematics and German Language) and some additional
regulations. To choose a CS course, the student must have selected
the scientific-technological branch before. CS in the 11 th grade
is based strongly on the learning outcomes of the 10 th grade – the
learning content consists mainly of dynamic data structures and
software engineering – whereas the topics of the 12 th grade are
elements of theoretical and technical CS. Unfortunately, in 2009
only about 7% of all students of the qualification stage had chosen
a CS course (according to the Bavarian School Administration).
All German students who have completed our survey come from
this group, most from 11 th grade (19 of 29).
3.3 The Ionian University
The curriculum of the Department of Informatics of Ionian University
focuses on the broad area of CS/Informatics with two areas
of specialization namely: (a) Humanistic Informatics and (b)
Information Systems. The curriculum comprises a set of core
courses and a set of elective courses through which the student
specializes in one of the two aforementioned specializations. The
curriculum was established early at the inception of the Department
in 2004 and based on accepted international standards
(ACM IS 2002). Regarding the first semester of the department
which is in our interests, it has a general knowledge program (the
orientations start at 5 th semester) and the following courses are
being taught: 1) Introduction to Computer science, 2) Introduction
to Programming, 3) Mathematical Analysis, 4) Linear Algebra
and 5) Introduction to Information Society.
4. THE SURVEY
The questionnaire handed out to the students was divided into two
parts. The first included questions on the demographics of the
sample (age and gender) and the second part included measures of
the various factors identified in the literature from previous researches.
Table 4 in the Appendix lists the questionnaire factors,
their operational definition, their items and the source from the
literature review. In all cases, 7-point Likert scales were used.
4.1 Sampling
The survey was open in the middle of the school year 2011-2012
at the Greek Lyceums and the German Gymnasiums and at the
beginning of 2011-2012 year of study in the Department of In-