School-Level Factors of Computer Science Education at the Upper Secondary School Level That Affect Further Studies in It

Computer science is an important subject not only for those who want to become computer scientists but also for everyone because it develops necessary skills for different fields. Upper secondary school is a critical time for making the choice regarding further studies. However, students' choices can be influenced by the organization of computer science (CS) education in upper-secondary schools or the availability of opportunities to study CS. As schools in Estonia have a high degree of autonomy, the aim of this research is to give an overview of the organization of CS education at the upper secondary level in Estonian schools and find out how it influences further studies in the information technology (IT) field. Three research questions were set for the research: (1) How is the teaching of computer science organized in different upper secondary schools, and what kind of additional activities are conducted to support it? (2) What support elements and obstacles are identified by school leaders in computer science education? (3) Are the supporting and hindering factors in school related to further study in the field of IT? The sample of the research consists of 30 different upper secondary schools (18.5 % of all schools of this type) in Estonia. Data was collected from the schools' curricula and school principals' questionnaires. The SPSS program was used for data processing and chi-square test and correlation analyses were performed. The study revealed that the organization of computer science education can be very variable across schools in Estonia. There are schools with compulsory courses, schools with elective courses, and those with both options. There are schools where computer science is not taught at all and schools where 7 different CS courses are offered. More than half of the schools cooperate with universities, and half of the schools get support to teach CS from the local government. A lack of qualified teachers and quality learning content was identified as hindering factors by both, the schools that teach computer science and those that do not. Principals of the schools where CS is not taught are significantly more concerned about the curriculum being overloaded, as opposed to those of the schools where CS is taught. On average, 13 % of all students choose IT as their further field of study. It was found that the more computer science courses a school offers, the more students proceed to study IT. In addition, students from the schools that cooperate with universities and other partners are more likely to continue their studies in the IT field. On the other hand, significantly fewer students proceed with their studies in IT if they come from schools where principals identified obstacles such as insufficient technical bases, missing technological support, overloaded curriculum, and limited interest of students. The results can be useful in understanding how different approaches to teaching computer science can affect the choice of further studies and what can be done, based on this, to improve computer science education in upper secondary schools.