Role Perceptions and Motivational Orientation of Computer Science Teachers

Teachers play an important role for the outcomes of lessons. Their perception of the subject and their perception of themselves and their abilities will affect the learning of students and in turn shape their perception of computer science (CS) as a subject. What separates computer science from more established subjects is that there will typically be various ways for teachers to pick up the new subject - certificate programs, traditional teacher training, lateral entry from industry, and more. To find out more about the motivation for teaching computer science and their role perceptions, we conducted an exploratory, qualitative study with computer science teachers. We collected data in form of semi-structured interviews (N = 23) and analyzed the results in light of existing theories on teacher roles and motivation. Our results identify typical roles from literature but also a CS specific emphasis of certain roles. Also, we identified two motivational orientations: One group is intrinsically motivated both for teaching in general and for teaching CS in particular. The other group is intrinsically motivated for teaching in general, but appears to be mostly extrinsically motivated for teaching computer science. Also, there appears to be a relation between perceived roles, motivation towards computer science and the career path of the teachers.