The Role of Encouragement for Success in Computing Education, and how that differs by demographics

A new report from NSF tells us a story that we’ve heard before — encouragement is a critical aspect of developing the confidence to succeed in CS. We found this in our statewide study in 2010, and Joanne Cohoon found this to be critical in her work. In our work, we found that encouragement was more critical for under-represented groups.  The new Google study tells us that the encouragement is not received equally.  The important part of Joanne’s work is that the encouragement could come from teachers of any gender.  This report is part of the growing trend to study the importance of affect in succeeding in computing education.

Students who have been told by parents or teachers they would be good at computer science (CS) are 2.5 to three times more likely to be interested in learning CS in the future, but students do not receive this encouragement equally. Additionally, despite positive perceptions about the CS field, lower personal perceptions of skills in math and science and a self-perceived low ability to learn CS may contribute to a gap in interest in CS among underrepresented groups that starts as early as age 14. This report summarizes key differences in interest in and confidence to learn CS among seventh- to 12th-grade students from underrepresented groups — girls, Black students and Hispanic students — as well as the level of encouragement to learn CS that these groups receive from key influencers such as parents and teachers, based on 2015- 2016 surveys.

Source: Google Report: Encouraging Students Toward Computer Science Learning