Hope, Aspirations, and the Impact of LLMs on Female Programming Learners in Afghanistan

TL;DR

This study tests the feasibility of adapting Snyder’s Hope Scale to measure educational aspirations among $n=136$ Afghan women learning programming during periods of socio-political restrictions. It translates and tailors the scale to a programming context (Persian translation), demonstrates acceptable reliability ($ ext{Cronbach’s }oldsymbol{\alpha}$) and strong understandability, and uses ANOVA to assess whether access to Large Language Models (LLMs) shifts aspiration scores. Overall aspirations did not significantly differ by LLM access, but the Avenues subscale showed a marginal increase ($p=0.056$) among those with LLM access, suggesting LLMs may broaden perceived pathways to goals. The findings support using the adapted scale for aspiration-informed evaluation of educational technologies in unstable contexts and highlight the need for longitudinal and qualitative work to capture broader socio-environmental factors. Key implications point toward aspiration-driven design as a metric for assessing long-term impact beyond immediate learning outcomes, while acknowledging challenges related to LLM reliance and biases.

Abstract

Designing impactful educational technologies in contexts of socio-political instability requires a nuanced understanding of educational aspirations. Currently, scalable metrics for measuring aspirations are limited. This study adapts, translates, and evaluates Snyder's Hope Scale as a metric for measuring aspirations among 136 women learning programming online during a period of systemic educational restrictions in Afghanistan. The adapted scale demonstrated good reliability (Cronbach's α = 0.78) and participants rated it as understandable and relevant. While overall aspiration-related scores did not differ significantly by access to Large Language Models (LLMs), those with access reported marginally higher scores on the Avenues subscale (p = .056), suggesting broader perceived pathways to achieving educational aspirations. These findings support the use of the adapted scale as a metric for aspirations in contexts of socio-political instability. More broadly, the adapted scale can be used to evaluate the impact of aspiration-driven design of educational technologies.

Figures (1)

• Figure 1: The box plots summarize score distributions for Aspiration and its subscales (Agency and Avenues). Each box represents the interquartile range (25th–75th percentiles) with the median marked by the line inside. Whiskers extend to the 10th and 90th percentiles.