Teaching and Learning Programming

Researchers studying how people learn to program are interested in what it actually takes for someone to think computationally — to break problems into steps, recognize patterns, and design systematic solutions — and how those skills can be taught effectively across different ages, tools, and contexts. The work spans classroom instruction, physical robots, tangible construction kits, and maker-oriented projects, reflecting a broad effort to understand which environments and methods help programming concepts stick. A persistent open question is why participation in computing remains unevenly distributed across gender and socioeconomic lines even when access improves, and how curriculum or pedagogy might close those gaps. Another active direction is using learning analytics to interpret the traces students leave as they code, hoping to give educators more precise insight into where understanding breaks down rather than waiting for a finished project or a test score.

Works

82,373

Total citations

640,600

Keywords

Computational ThinkingProgramming EducationEducational RoboticsMaker MovementLearning AnalyticsGender Differences