self-efficacy beliefs, achievement motivation and gender as related to educational software development

Abstract

This study aims to investigate preservice computer teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs and achievement motivation levels for educational software development before and after the “Educational Software Design, Development and Evaluation (ESDDE)” course. A pretest and post test design without a control group was employed. In 2008, 46 senior students (25 male and 21 female) who were enrolled at Computer Education and Instructional Technology department participated in this study.The data were collected by the scale of self-efficacy beliefs towards Educational Software Development (ESD), achievement motivation scale besides student demographics form. Positively, the results revealed that the students’ self efficacy beliefs towards educational software development significantly improved after ESDDE course. Before the course, the students’ self-efficacy beliefs were significantly different according to perceived level of programming competency and gender in favor of male, however after the course there was no significant difference in self-efficacy beliefs regarding gender and perceived level of programming competency. Hence, achievement motivation levels after the course were significantly higher than before while gender and perceived level of programming competency had no significant effect on achievement motivation for ESD. The study is considered to contribute studies investigating gender and computer related self efficacy beliefs in IT education.