The gap between enrollments in higher education computing programs and the high-tech industry's demands is widely reported, and is especially prominent for women. Increasing the availability of computer science education in high school is one of the strategies suggested in order to address this gap. We look at the connection between exposure…

This work investigates the effectiveness of simulated robots as tools to support the learning of programming. After the completion of a systematic review and exploratory research, a multi-case case study was undertaken. A simulator, named Kebot, was developed and used to run four 10-hour programming workshops. Twenty-three student participants…

This paper reports on a series of introductory programming workshops, initially targeting female high school students, which utilised Lego Mindstorms robots. Cognitive load theory (CLT) was applied to the instructional design of the workshops, and a controlled experiment was also conducted investigating aspects of the interface. Results indicated…

Computer science proficiency continues to grow in importance, while the number of students entering computer science-related fields declines. Many rich programming environments have been created to motivate student interest and expertise in computer science. In the current study, we investigated whether a recently created environment, Robot…

Due to a program reform in Israel, experienced CS high-school teachers faced the need to master and teach a new programming paradigm. This situation served as an opportunity to explore the relationship between teachers' content knowledge (CK) and their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). This article focuses on three case studies, with emphasis…

This paper examines students' pre-college experience with computers. It finds significant gender differences in how students develop interest in computers; exposure to computers at home; availability of computers in high schools; and high-school preparations for college study in a computing field. The paper has a number of implications to improve…

We studied students' conceptions of correctness and their influence on students' correctness-related practices by examining how 159 students had analyzed the correctness of error-free and erroneous algorithms and by interviewing seven students regarding their work. We found that students conceptualized program correctness as the sum of the…

Abstraction is a major concept in computer science and serves as a powerful tool in software development. Pattern-oriented instruction (POI) is a pedagogical approach that incorporates patterns in an introductory computer science course in order to structure the learning of algorithmic problem solving. This paper examines abstraction processes in…

This paper presents a simple 4 bit computer processor design that may be built using TTL chips for less than $65. In addition to describing the processor itself in detail, we discuss our experience using the laboratory kit and its associated machine instruction set to teach computer architecture to high school students. (Contains 3 figures and 5…

The purpose of this study was to assess structural knowledge change across a two-week workshop designed to provide high-school teachers with training in Java and Object Oriented Programming. Both before and after the workshop, teachers assigned relatedness ratings to pairs of key concepts regarding Java and Object Oriented Programming. Their…

Constructing a data model for a problem area requires identifying and formulating some symbolic representation of the concepts involved, their characteristics, and the relationships between them. Taking a socio-cultural perspective on learning, analysis of classroom dialog is used to identify cognitive challenges met by novice students of data…

This article describes research on the learning of object-oriented programming (OOP) by novices. During two academic years, we taught OOP to high school students, using Java and BlueJ. Our approach to teaching featured: objects-first, teaching composed classes relatively early, deferring the teaching of main methods, and focusing on class…

Norms govern the criteria by which students decide what is good and what is not good, and align their learning trajectories accordingly.We found that the high-school students' norm is to produce working, but not necessarily error-free, programs and to argue for their correctness solely on the basis of a few executions. Therefore, they prefer…

The primary objective of this study was to determine the degree to which academic motivation predicted the executive help-seeking, instrumental help-seeking, perceived benefits of help-seeking, and avoidance of help-seeking of high school students enrolled in computer science (n = 314). Task goals were positively associated with instrumental…

Recursion is a central concept in computer science, yet it is difficult for beginners to comprehend. Israeli high-school students learn recursion in the framework of a special modular program in computer science (Gal-Ezer & Harel, 1999). Some of them are introduced to the concept of recursion in two different paradigms: the procedural programming…