Programming has been and still is a popular and rewarding skill. Industry’s demand for software engineers, specifically expert programmers, has been growing rapidly. However, research shows that there has been and still is a problem in teaching and learning programming. This can be attributed to the difficulty of understanding programming concepts. An early failure to understand these concepts can affect student’s enthusiasm and shake their confidence. This research will investigate how students learn programming. The knowledge acquired from the outcome of the research will then be used to develop an approach that will help them learn programming effectively and improve their programming performance.

Supervisors: Dr Sue Black, Dr David Hearnshaw, Dr Geoff Dowling.