A cognitive approach to identifying measurable milestones for programming skill acquisition

Mead, J., Gray, S., Hamer, J., James, R., Sorva, J., Clair, C. S., and Thomas, L. 2006. A cognitive approach to identifying measurable milestones for programming skill acquisition. SIGCSE Bull. 38, 4 (Dec. 2006), 182-194.

Traditional approaches to programming education, as exemplified by the typical CS1/CS2 course sequence, have not taken advantage of the long record of psychological and experimental studies on the development of programming skills. These studies indicate a need for a new curricular strategy for developing programming skills and indicate that a cognitive approach would be a promising starting point. This paper first reviews the literature on studies of programming skills, cognition and learning, then within that context reports on a new formal structure, called an anchor graph, that supports curricular design and facilitates the setting of measurable milestones.

Peer reviewed