Teaching and Learning Programming

Research on teaching and learning programming examines how people acquire computational thinking skills—the ability to break problems into logical steps, recognize patterns, and design systematic solutions—across formal and informal educational settings. Scholars investigate approaches ranging from block-based coding environments and educational robotics to maker spaces and tangible interfaces that let younger students manipulate physical objects to learn abstract concepts, with a sustained focus on which methods work for which students and why. A persistent open question concerns equity: girls, students from lower-income backgrounds, and other underrepresented groups often engage with computing differently or disengage earlier, and researchers are working to understand whether the gap reflects pedagogy, cultural context, curriculum design, or some combination. Learning analytics—automated analysis of how students interact with coding tools and exercises—has recently opened new ways to study these questions at scale, though how best to translate those insights into classroom practice remains an active area of work.

Works

80,394

Total citations

632,592

Keywords

Computational ThinkingProgramming EducationEducational RoboticsMaker MovementLearning AnalyticsGender Differences