Compliance to eXtreme Apprenticeship in a Programming Course: Performance, Achievement Emotions, and Self-efficacy

We investigated the efficacy of using the eXtreme Apprenticeship (XA) methodology for teaching programming courses at the university by considering an often-neglected aspect: students’ achievement emotions in XA tasks. We involved 53 university students who participated in a XA-based programming course. We assessed students’ performance in the course, their achievement emotions and self-efficacy. Key results of the study are presented in the paper. Students with a higher compliance towards the course performed better and were characterised by less intense anxiety, anger, and hopelessness compared to those with a lower compliance. Among achievement emotions, only shame mediated the relation between self-efficacy and performance. Such findings are discussed in terms of their theoretical and applied relevance.