CS Ed. in Prisons and Jails: Evidence of Computer Programming Self-Efficacy Growth Across Multiple Course Offerings
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3770762.3772650.pdf
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1.14 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
4954118501c5ab83bdb9750fab637a77
Author(s)
Fishberg, Andrew
Gaetz, Marisa
Nisser, Martin
Cafferty, Carole
Perlman, Lee
Soicher, Raechel N.
Long, Joshua
Date Issued
February 17, 2026
Publisher
ACM|Proceedings of the 57th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V.1
Citation
Andrew Fishberg, Marisa Gaetz, Martin Nisser, Carole Cafferty, Lee Perlman, Raechel N. Soicher, and Joshua Long. 2026. CS Ed. in Prisons and Jails: Evidence of Computer Programming Self-Efficacy Growth Across Multiple Course Offerings. In Proceedings of the 57th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V.1 (SIGCSE TS 2026), Vol. 1. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 337–343.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Incarcerated students enrolled in education programs in prisons and jails experience a range of benefits, from reduced recidivism to improved psychosocial well-being. With respect to computer science education, little is still known about how courses impact incarcerated students' experiences, though recent work has explored fears and confidence of incarcerated students enrolled in computer science courses. Our work investigates incarcerated students' changes in self-efficacy over multiple iterations of four different classes. Our findings showed that all subscales of computer programming self-efficacy (algorithm, control, cooperation, debugging, and logic), but not generalized self-efficacy, were statistically significantly increased at the end of the courses relative to the beginning (p < 0.001, n = 36). A similar pattern of results across the full sample (n = 188) adds additional support for the veracity of the effects found in the subset of paired data. Additionally, we share students' qualitative data to add nuance to our findings and emphasize the importance of these educational experiences for incarcerated students' personal and professional development.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Aerospace Controls Laboratory
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mathematics
MIT Experimental Study Group
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Teaching and Learning Laboratory
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Creative Commons Attribution
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1145/3770762.3772650
