Novice mistakes: are the folk wisdoms correct?
Communications of the ACM
Learning to program = learning to construct mechanisms and explanations
Communications of the ACM
Beacons in computer program comprehension
International Journal of Man-Machine Studies
The programmer's burden: developing expertise in programming
The psychology of expertise
Knowledge restructuring and the acquisition of programming expertise
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies
Programming pedagogy—a psychological overview
ACM SIGCSE Bulletin
Expertise, models of learning and computer-based tutoring
Computers & Education
Grand Challenges in Computing: Education---A Summary
The Computer Journal
Restoring "coding with intention" in introductory programming courses
Proceedings of the 8th ACM SIGITE conference on Information technology education
Preprogramming knowledge: a major source of misconceptions in novice programmers
Human-Computer Interaction
Human-Computer Interaction
Expertise and Intuition: A Tale of Three Theories
Minds and Machines
Cognitive Systems Research
An interactive e-learning system for improving web programming skills
Education and Information Technologies
Formation of Novice Business Students' Mental Models Through Simulation Gaming
Simulation and Gaming
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Studies show that for many years courses teaching computer programming skills to novices have engendered a dislike for programming in many students. The first phase of this study presented identical content in one of three instructional sequences to 34 college students who were programming novices to determine which produced the greatest development of programming expertise. Learning was measured by performance on a Programming Assessment given immediately after the intervention, and effort and difficulty were self-rated during the instruction. There was no significant difference among the groups in Programming Assessment scores, and overall self-rated effort and difficulty of the instruction did not vary simply by rearranging the order in which the major elements were presented. However, instructional units that covered programming syntax skills and structures were rated by all groups as requiring significantly less effort and difficulty than units covering plans, and participants in all groups scored significantly higher on syntax skills and structures than on plans. The second phase sought evidence that there were differences in perception and the complexity of knowledge in long term memory between novices and experts programmers by comparing the fifteen top performing participants on the Programming Assessment with three programming experts in chunking a short program and in constructing the central solution statement to four programming problems. Experts chunked programs to twice the levels and twice as fast as novices, indicating differences in the mental organization of novices and experts. The implications of these results are discussed.