How are primary school computer science curricular reforms contributing to equity? Impact on student learning, perception of the discipline, and gender gaps

International Journal of STEM Education

Table 4 Hierarchical linear model for student learning with respect to student-, and teacher-level variables (dependent variable: delta between pre- and post-test scores, \(n=1027\) students in 57 classes in 6 schools)

Variables		Estimate	95% CI	Std. error	Degrees of freedom	t-value	p-value
Student-level	(Intercept)	10.48	[5.42, 15.54]	2.579	968	4.06	0.0001
	Pre-test score	− 0.35	[− 0.40, − 0.31]	0.023	968	\(-15.54\)	\({\textbf {0.0000}}\)
	Gender (girl)	0.17	\([-0.22, 0.55]\)	0.198	968	0.84	0.4021
	Grade (3)	0.35	\([-0.34, 0.53]\)	0.823	39	0.42	0.6746
	Grade (4)	1.15	\([-0.13, 0.73]\)	0.814	39	1.41	0.1663
Teacher-perception	CS-PD programme evaluation	\({\textbf {1.02}}\)	[0.07, 0.38]	0.344	39	2.96	\({\textbf {0.0053}}\)
	CS utility perception	0.15	\([-0.84, 1.06]\)	0.628	39	0.24	0.8122
	CS non-utility perception	0.27	\([-0.72, 1.18]\)	0.600	39	0.45	0.6561
	CS autonomous motivation	\(-0.21\)	\([-0.97, 0.56]\)	0.380	39	\(-0.54\)	0.5896
Teacher demographics	Age	\(-0.14\)	\([-0.30, 0.01]\)	0.078	39	\(-1.83\)	0.0743
	Experience with informatics	0.01	\([-0.06, 0.09]\)	0.036	39	0.41	0.6828
	Teaching experience	0.11	\([-0.05, 0.27]\)	0.079	39	1.42	0.1640
	Digital education teaching experience	\(-0.10\)	\([-0.31, 0.11]\)	0.104	39	\(-0.94\)	0.3552
	Perceived ICT competence	\(-0.57\)	\([-1.34,0.19]\)	0.376	39	\(-1.53\)	0.1345
	Perceived relative ICT competence	0.20	\([-0.65, 1.05]\)	0.421	39	0.47	0.6387

Significant variables are highlighted in bold. \(R^2=0.279\), \({\text{AIC}}=5386\), \({\text{BIC}}=5474\), \({\text{RMSE}}=3.04\). Random effects \(\sigma ^2=9.72\), \(\tau _{\text{class}}=0.57\), \(\tau _{\text{school}}=1.37\)
Please note that (i) the classes had an average of \(18\pm 2\) students per class (minimum 14, maximum 22); (ii) the schools had an average of \(8\pm 5\) classes (i.e. 8, 8, 1, 17, 6, 7, 8 classes) who participated in the three data collections required for this analysis. These numbers are coherent with the relative sizes of the schools, with the exception of the third where the majority of teachers chose not to participate in the data collection