The role of a philosophy of microcomputer education and its relationship to microcomputer effectiveness in secondary schools

The study was concerned with the possible lack of formulated philosophies of microcomputer education serving as a foundation for the schools' computer education efforts. A questionnaire was sent to 178 governmental and nongovernmental secondary schools in Maryland and Washington, D.C. to determine the existence of these philosophies and of computer education goals and their impact on the success of computer education programs.;Of the 63 percent return rate, only fourteen of the responding schools indicated having specific philosophies of microcomputer education. Neither schools with or without these philosophies considered them as being most critical factors to the success of their programs. Of the eighty-three schools without a specific philosophy of microcomputer education 53 percent reported success, compared to 79 percent of the fourteen schools with philosophies of microcomputer education. A Fisher exact test of association, however, did not conclusively find differences among the proportions of schools with and without philosophies of microcomputer education and with the reports of success/nonsuccess. Twenty-seven (29 percent) of the responding schools reported having written computer education goals. Forty-eight percent of the schools without computer education goals reported success, compared to 85 percent of the schools with such goals. A chi-square test showed a relationship between schools with and without computer education goals and with reported success/nonsuccess of the programs. Seventy-four (76 percent) of the responding schools reported having philosophies of education which addressed the curriculum; of these only nine indicated that the philosophies addressed computer education. Sixty-six percent of these seventy-four schools reported that the philosophies of education had not been of prime assistance to the computer education programs. Overall, fifty-five (57 percent) of the responding schools reported success with their computer education programs.;Conclusions were that philosophies of microcomputer education were not being widely formulated in the surveyed secondary schools and that their impact on reported success, when present, was inconclusive. Computer education goals were more widely developed, and although not recognized as most critical factors to the success of computer education programs, their existence was found to have a relationship with the reported success.