Why complicate things?: introducing programming in high school using Python

• Authors: Linda Grandell;Mia Peltomäki;Ralph-Johan Back;Tapio Salakoski
• Venue: ACE '06 Proceedings of the 8th Australasian Conference on Computing Education - Volume 52
• Year: 2006

Deciding what to teach novices about programming and what programming language to use is a common topic for debate. Should an industry relevant programming language be taught, or should a language designed for teaching novices be used? Typically, these questions are raised at university level, but in this paper we address them from a high school perspective.We present a case study with a twofold goal: (1) examining how programming can be introduced at high school level, and (2) evaluating how suitable the programming language Python is to support both teachers and learners in this process. During the school year 2004/2005, an introductory programming course was given to four student groups in two different high schools. The students enjoyed programming and learnt to think in terms of re-use and interfaces. In addition, we found that many features of Python facilitated both teaching and learning (for instance, a simple and flexible syntax, immediate feedback, easy-to-use modules and strict requirements on proper indentation).Our findings support results from previous studies in that students have difficulties in dealing with abstract concepts - even though the syntax for implementing these is simple. In addition, compared to university students, high school students are young and have necessarily not yet developed the writing skills required for producing proper documentation. The course was designed to be well suited for high school students in general, but still all participants were boys. Since high schools should provide all-round learning to all students, we, as do all computer science teachers, face the challenge of making programming more appealing to girls.