In-School and/or Out-of-School Computer Science (CS) Learning Influence on CS Career Interests, Mediated by Having Role Models

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Three
  In Roundtable Session: Multimodal Literacy in Out-of-School Time Programs: Family and Community Ties (Table 17)

Abstract

Both in-school and out-of-school offerings of computer science (CS) learning opportunities are expanding, but their influences on CS career interests are unclear. Applying multinomial propensity score weighting analysis on a year-2021 U.S. national representative sample of 4,107 5-to-12-grade students, we found that having both experiences gave the strongest boost to CS career interest, followed by out-of-school, in-school and none. Out-of-school was the strongest predictor to have CS role-models. One third of the effect of both, and half of the effect of out-of-school or in-school, were mediated by having CS role models. We interpret these findings to suggest that out-of-school CS learning may offer more exposure to CS professionals and real-world challenges, which may foster students’ CS career interests.

Authors

• Chen Chen, University of Hong Kong
  Presenting Author

• Jonathan Rothwell, Gallup
  Non-Presenting Author

• Pedrito Maynard-Zhang, Amazon
  Non-Presenting Author