WG5 - A Survey of Literature on the Teaching of Introductory Programming

Three decades of active research on the teaching of introductory programming has had little effect on classroom practice. Although relevant research exists across several disciplines, including education and cognitive science, disciplinary differences have made this material inaccessible to most computing educators. Furthermore, computer science instructors have not had access to a comprehensive survey of research on this problem. Work is needed to classify this literature, identify important work and mediate it to the computing disciplines.

The goal of the working group is to develop a framework that supports analysis of research on teaching introductory programming. The intent is to identify research that can give well-supported advice to computing academics teaching introductory programming, as well as to identify limitations and areas of incomplete coverage of existing research efforts. The group's analysis will apply metrics based on criteria developed by a previous ITiCSE working group. We are inviting participation from computing education researchers and from teachers of introductory programming with an interest in improving pedagogy in this area.

WG5 Leaders

Arnold Pears (Uppsala University)
Stephen Seidman (University of Central Arkansas)

WG5 Members

• Elizabeth Adams
• Jens Bennedsen
• Michael Casperson
• Marie Devlin
• Lauri Malmi
• Linda Mannila
• James Paterson