This study has two central purposes: First, it examines not only the roles of gender and persistence in undergraduate computing majors' learning self-efficacy, computer self-efficacy, and programming self-efficacy but also Bandura's hypothesized sources of self-efficacy; second, it examines the influence of sources of efficacy on the three…

The scope of this article is to understand to what extent Computer Science teachers can find support for their Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) in teaching material. We report the results of a study in which PCK is used as framework to develop a research instrument to examine three high school computer science textbooks, with special focus on…

This article deals with gender phenomena in the context of digital literacy. Studies show that computer use, computer skills, and computer-related self-concepts are subject to gender differences. These differences may affect classroom interactions as well as learning processes and have therefore to be considered carefully by teachers who apply…

In this investigation, the use of the Alice programming language in an introductory computing class was studied from both a quantitative and qualitative perspective. Students in an introductory computing class participated in a 2.5-week unit to learn programming through the graphical programming environment of Alice. Quantitatively, students were…

Many believe that girls lack the confidence and motivation to persist with computers when they face a challenge. In order to increase the number of girls and women in information technology careers, we need a better understanding of how they think about and solve problems while working on the computer. In this article, we describe a qualitative…

Presents a human-computer interaction (HCI) conceptions model designed to help in the understanding of the cognitive processes involved when college students learn to program computers. Examines syntactic and algorithmic HCI operational errors and reviews conceptions based on natural language reasoning, independent computer reasoning, and…

The Bath County Computer Attitude Scale was designed to assess attitudes of students in grades 4-12 toward 5 areas: general computer use, computer-assisted instruction, programming and technical concepts, social issues surrounding computer use, and computer history. The reliability and validity of the instrument is examined. (62 references)…