Future Trends in Computer Programming Education

Dear Colleagues,

Teaching and learning programming is a never-ending story. It is widely accepted that learning programming is difficult and the classic approach to teaching programming, which is based on using a conventional programming language and environment for solving number and symbol-processing problems, is quite problematic. Students have to be supported, motivated and engaged in the learning process in order to comprehend the principles of programming and write good-quality code. Several types of educational programming environments and tools have been developed in recent decades, such as programming microworlds, structure editors, program/software visualization tools, and flowchart-based programming environments, among others. Several teaching approaches have also been devised based on the aforementioned tools. Moreover, extended research has been carried out regarding the best strategy for introducing novices to programming, including the imperative-first, function-first and object-first strategies, as well as the most appropriate language for each strategy.

In recent years, the educational community around the world has shown an even greater interest in teaching and learning programming as a means of promoting computational thinking, which is considered important for everyone and not just computer scientists. Today, primary school kids are educated to think computationally through specially designed programming environments, such as Scratch or the widely known “Hour of Code” games.

Another important dimension of the work around teaching and learning programming in today’s world lies in the way that “digital natives” grow up and learn. Game-based learning and educational/serious games are considered a promising approach for learning programming. Pair programming and more recently distributed pair programming are other contemporary approaches that promote collaboration among students, which is also considered important.

The objective of this Special Issue is to explore recent advances and future trends in computer programming education.

Prof. Dr. Stelios Xinogalos
Guest Editor

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