A Survey of Literature on the Teaching of IntroductoryProgrammingArnold Pears,Uppsala Uni., [email protected] Seidman,Uni. of Central Arkansas, [email protected] Malmi,Helsinki Uni. of Tech., [email protected] MannilaÅbo Akademi Uni., [email protected] AdamsJames Madison Uni., [email protected] BennedsenIT Uni. West, [email protected] DevlinNewcastle Uni., [email protected] PatersonGlasgow Caledonian Uni., [email protected] decades of active research on the teaching of intro-ductory programming has had limited effect on classroompractice. Although relevant research ex ists across severaldisciplines including education and cognitive science, disci-plinary differences have made this material inaccessible tomany computing educators. Furthermore, computer scienceinstructors have not had access to a comprehensive surveyof research in t his area. This paper collects and classifiesthis literature, identifies important work and mediates it tocomputing educators and professional bodies.We identify research that gives well-supported advice tocomputing academics teaching introductory programming.Limitations and areas of incomplete coverage of existing re-search efforts are also identified. The analysis applies publi-cation and research quality metrics developed by a previousITiCSE working group [74].Categories and Subject DescriptorsK.3 [Computing Milieux]: Computers and Education;K.3.2 [Computers and Education]: Computer and In-formation Science EducationGeneral TermsTHEORYKeywordscomputing education research, teaching, literature survey,bibliography, introductory programming1. INTRODUCTIONThe goal of this paper is to answer the question “Whatbody of research literature can inform instructors when de-signing a new introductory programming course?” The liter-ature discussed here can help instructors to answer questionssuch as: “What programming language should be used?”,“What tools and environments support learning, and how?”,“What pedagogies have been tested, and what are the out-comes?”, and “How does the new course fit into a largercomputing curriculum?”The audience for this pap er includes comput ing facultywho are planning, designing, d eveloping, revising or imple-menting a new course that introduces programming conceptsto novice programmers. Design and development of such acourse may be influenced by many factors, including thehistory and culture of the department offering the course,the needs of prospective employers, the requirements of ac-creditation or assessment bodies, as well as n ational andinternational perspectives on computing education.We discuss some of t hese issues below. Within the localcontext created by these factors, the results of decades ofcomputing education research can provide important inputto th e course design process. This paper seeks to providecourse designers with an overview of evidence-based papersin the computing education research literature that have hadan influence on the practice of teaching. Evidence-basedresearch is defined as the use of literature and results fromrelevant areas of the scholarship of teaching and learningto motivate and support teaching practice. The nature andquality of evidence is determined by the level of agreementof research literature as to what is known in the area. Weassume that readers of this paper have little experience orexposure to general literature in the theory of teaching andlearning in higher education.It is unlikely that a new introductory course can be planned,designed, developed, or implemented on the initiative of asingle faculty member. Such an effort generally requires thecreation of consensus at multiple levels: committee, depart-ment, college, university, and even possibly the concurrenceof a ministry of education. As noted above, there are manyactual or potential constraints on new course creation. Forexample, a US university may be constrained by articulationagreements with other universities or with two-year colleges,or by the curricula for “advanced placement” examinationstaken by secondary students. European universities may beconstrained by national agreements relating to the BolognaAccord1. More generally, a local employer may try to in-1“The Bologna Process aims to create a EuropeanHigher Education Area by 2010, in which studentscan choose from a wide and transparent range ofhigh quality courses and benefit from smooth recog-nition procedures.”, see http://ec.europa.eu/edu cation/-204fluence a university to structure a curriculum around itsemployment needs, or the department may have a strongposition in a particular research area.Increasing focu s on teaching practice over the last fifteenyears has resulted in a worldwide shift in education frominstructor-centered to student-centered learning. Boyer’sdiscussion of the “Scholarship of Teaching” in [16] gave riseto a worldwide discussion about academic engagement inteaching practice and to an increased emphasis on a schol-arly approach to teaching. The scope h as since expandedto encompass learning as well. Such an approach requiresinstructors to be aware of two distinct categories of researchliterature: work that deals with theories of teaching, learn-ing and knowledge acquisition relevant to the discipline ( e.g.[95, 94, 65, 63]), and work dealing specifically with teachingissues in the subject matter of instruction (e.g. [70, 81]).This report provides an overview of research in both ofthese categories. It highlights p ublications which we haveidentified as particularly relevant to teaching and learningdesigns for introductory programming courses. Specifically,we identify and comment on research in the following cate-gories:• Curricula• Pedagogy• Language choice• Tools for t eachingWhere possible, we summarise existing research and makeconcrete recommendations for teaching based on empiricalresearch results in tertiary computing education. In addi-tion, we identify shortcomings in the research to date andrecommend that future research in such areas should begiven a high priority.2. METHODPapers for consideration by the working group were so-licited from the community by sending a direct email requestfor contribu tions to approximately 100 academics active incomputing education research worldwide who were known tothe working group coordinators. The request for input wasalso distributed via the SIGCSE