MOTIVATIONAL FACTORS IN TEACHING COMPUTER SCIENCE

The Ministry of Science, Education and Sports of the Republic of Croatia defines the National Curriculum Framework which is implemented in secondary education through the valid curriculum. In these strategic documents, computer science teachers find the cornerstones of the valid teaching content they need to pass on to their students. In this way, the basic didactic precondition for the teaching is realized by defining roles of the students, teacher and teaching content. However, for the purpose of providing high-quality computer science teaching authors focused their attention on the discovery of motivational factors that encourage students to learn computer science. The research was conducted on 67 secondary school students of the three secondary education programs (General Gymnasium, Nurse and Physiotherapist). The students filled out a survey that consisted of open and closed questions. Main aim of this research was to examine which motivational factors in the teaching of computer science encourage learners to learn. Motivational factors were divided into two basic groups. The first group of motivational factors covered the first stage of the didactical triangle, which is a student. The motivational factors pertaining to the students covered the learner's motivation for learning, working habits, participation in computer science course, the preferred forms of learning and investment of his own effort. The second group of motivational factors was related to the second and third bases of the didactical triangle, which are the teacher and teaching content which are related to the motivational factors of the teaching and teaching environment. Consequently, through open-type questions, the students expressed what they like most about computer science and what they would change. Primary goal of this research was to find out the motivational factors that encourage students to learn computer science, secondary objective was to provide computer science teachers with better understanding of factors which could help them to better motivate their students.