Informatics Education in School: A Multi-Year Large-Scale Study on Female Participation and Teachers’ Beliefs

Abstract

This paper describes the outcomes of a multi-year large-scale study on Informatics education in school, involving an average of 3,600 teachers per school year of all school levels. The study has been conducted in Italy, where - generally speaking - there is no compulsory informatics education in school. Teachers have voluntarily enrolled in the “Programma il Futuro” project, running since 2014, and have taught short introductory courses in Informatics. Answering - anonymously - to monitoring questionnaires, they have indicated whether girls or boys were more interested in Informatics activities and whether girls or boys were more effective.