Student entrance knowledge, expectations, and motivation within introductory programming courses in Portugal and Serbia
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resumo
Programming is a skill needed across various disciplines and it is becoming more
valuable for many job positions. However, students still appear to struggle in
introductory programming courses. Academic achievement in programming may be
influenced by numerous factors and may vary across countries, as observed in a
previous study focused on Portugal and Serbia. In the present study, factors
generally related to achievement and attrition, namely student entrance knowledge,
expectations, and motivation, were examined as possible reasons behind
achievement issues in introductory programming. An anonymous questionnaire that
comprised closed-ended items was given to students enrolled in introductory
programming courses at technically oriented higher education institutions in Portugal
and Serbia. After data cleansing, response data from 678 students were
quantitatively analysed to identify overall characteristics of the investigated groups,
as well as differences between the groups from the two countries.
The students generally had numerous expectations and motives regarding
introductory programming, but their reported entrance knowledge of programming
was generally at low levels. On average, the groups from the two countries were
similar. The main differences include higher entrance knowledge for students from
Serbia and slightly higher expectations for students from Portugal. These findings
form a basis for further inquiry into causes of previously observed student
performance variations between Portugal and Serbia. As there are many
commonalities between the students from these countries, we may work on novel
instruction methods and tools that would be useful for programming teachers and
enrolled students in both countries.
