To get more insights into the issue of ICT interests and competencies at school in Greece and Germany, we have run an empirical study. In this study, the particular interests of male s and female s in upper secondary classes have been researched into. The instrument was a questionnaire which asked pupils about their particular preferences and interests in the context of digital literacy which was adapted from Huemer (2005). The pupils received the questionnaires in their respective mother tongue. 185 students participated in this study: 90 (48 males, 42 females) from Germany and 95 (48 males, 47 females) from Greece. The mean age of the sample was around 17 years. However, the German sample was slightly older on average than the Greek sample and therefore age was considered for all further analysis.
Results
Figure 1 shows the general interest in computer science asking students if they seek information about computers in their spare time in magazines or in the news. Results show that Greek pupils show significantly more interest. Furthermore, boys were shown to be more interested than girls in both countries. Besides, we found an effect of age indicating that older pupils were less interested than the younger ones. Considering the scale range (three items) from a minimum of 2.5 (not interested) to a maximum of 10 (very interested), one can see that the general interest was rather moderate in both countries (average of 4.61 in Germany, and 5.89 in Greece).
Besides the interest in computer science, another important aspect is the self-confidence of pupils regarding their ability in performing tasks on the computer (see Figure 2). Similar to the results with respect to interest, Greek pupils show more self-confidence than German pupils, even though the difference is not significant. Also, for this category, there was an effect that boys were more self-confident than girls in both countries. Besides, we found an effect of age indicating that older pupils were less self-confident than the younger ones. In contrast to the interest scale, pupils reported rather high level of self-confidence (average of 6.91 in Germany, and 7.90 in Greece).
In the following, we will focus on particular interests of pupils in four different aspects of computer science: hardware, programming, standard software, and Internet.
With respect to pupils’ interest in hardware, we can see a stereotypical interest distribution for both countries (see Figure 3). Greek pupils show slightly more interest in hardware than German
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Figure 2. Self-confidence in computer science (N = 183; Min = 2.5; Max = 10; M = 7.39; SD = 1.37)
Self-confidence
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pupils. For this category, there was strong effect that boys were more interested in hardware than girls in both countries. Interest in hardware was not subject to age. In general, boys were rather or very interested in hardware, while girls were just moderately to rather interest.
Compared to hardware, pupils showed less interest in programming (see Figure 4). In this category, there were no significant differences between Germany and Greece, apart from an effect for sex: boys were more interested in programming than girls in both countries. Boys and girls were just moderately interested in program-
ming (average for Germany: 6.36, and Greece: 6.50); there was no effect regarding age.
With respect to standard software the gender difference has changed. Even though the difference was slight, girls showed more interest in standard software than boys (see Figure 5). Also,
there were no significant differences between Germany and Greece in this category (average of Germany: 7.13, and Greece: 7.06), neither for age.
With respect to the Internet, we can descriptively see higher interest values for girls than for
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boys, and also for German pupils than for Greek pupils (see Figure 6). However, these descriptive differences are far from significance (average of Germany: 8.03 and Greece: 7.89). The pupils’ age was not important for this category.