Pre-Service Teachers' Perception of Programming Education

Abstract

The increased trend of incorporating computer programming in the basic education system across countries requires the training of new educators. However, the current effort to increase the number of teachers teaching programming is through professional development programs for computer science (CS) teachers and from other content areas. Meanwhile, pre-service teachers within the CS teacher preparation program should be prepared for the subject implementation to support the push for programming education. While the CS pre-service teachers statutorily would complete programming courses as part of their program, there is a need to understand their perspectives towards teaching programming in schools. Hence, this study investigated programming education from the perspective of pre-service teachers concerning programming understanding, expectation, and support. We adapted and validated the POPE (perception of programming education) survey which has been utilized to examine various education stakeholders' attitude-intention-behavior within the theoretical framework of the Theory of Reasoned Action. Our study participants were 294 Information and Communication Technology education pre-service teachers in a public university in Ghana. To analyze the participants' responses, AMOS software version 26.0 was used to perform Confirmatory Factor Analysis and structural equation modeling. Results confirmed the hypotheses, while the demographic variables have no significant effect on the three programming dimensions. This study concludes by highlighting the study's implications for policy and practices and suggesting future research agendas.