A STUDY ON THE PRIMARY SCHOOL SECONDARY LEVEL STUDENTS’ SELF-EFFICACY PERCEPTION OF THEIR COMPUTER COMPETENCE

The purpose of the present study is to evaluate the primary school secondary level students’ self-efficacy perception of their computer competence in relation to their computer usage frequency. The present study was carried out in 2006-2007 school year based on a pre-test, post-test and control group design. The sampling of the study consists of 270 primary school students attending Nazım Akcan Primary School and the participants were assigned to six groups (one control and one experimental group from each of the 6th, 7th and 8th grades). Experimental group made use of the computer laboratory in the school 30 hours more than the control groups throughout a school year. In order to collect data, “Computer Self-efficacy Scale” was used (1). Descriptive statistics, t-test and one way ANOVA were used to evaluate the data. The Cronbach alfa reliability coefficient of the scale was found to be α=.81. Depending on the computer usage frequency, the computer self-efficacy perception scores of the sixth and seventh grade students significantly enhanced. Moreover, pre-test and post-test scores of the students did not vary significantly according to gender, age, and income level.