The DOI matches its Crossref record; 93 of the 93 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
A Systematic Literature Review on Teaching and Learning Introductory Programming in Higher Education
Abstract
Contribution: This paper adds to the results of previous systematic literature reviews by addressing a more contemporary context of introductory programming. It proposes a categorization of introductory programming challenges, and highlights key issues for a research roadmap on introductory programming learning and teaching in higher education. Background: Despite the advances in methods and tools for teaching and learning introductory programming, dropout and failure rates are still high. Published surveys and reviews either cover papers only up to 2007, or focus on methods and tools for teaching introductory programming. Research Questions: 1) What previous skills and background knowledge are key for a novice student to learn programming? 2) What difficulties do novice students encounter in learning how to program? 3) What challenges do teachers encounter in teaching introductory programming? Methodology: Following a formal protocol, automatic and manual searches were performed for work from 2010 to 2016. Of 100 papers selected for data extraction, 89 were retained after quality assessment. Findings: The most frequently cited skills necessary for learning programming were related to problem solving and mathematical ability. Problem solving was also cited as a learning challenge, followed by motivation and engagement, and difficulties in learning the syntax of programming languages. The main teaching challenges concern the lack of appropriate methods and tools, as well as scaling and personalized teaching.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Systematic reviews in the social sciences: a practical guide
(2006) · Choice Reviews Online · doi:10.5860/choice.43-5664 · Cited by 4,089
Resnick, M., Maloney, J., Monroy-Hernández, A., Rusk, N., Eastmond, E., Brennan, K., Millner, A., Rosenbaum, E., Silver, J., Silverman, B., et al. (2009) · Communications of the ACM · doi:10.1145/1592761.1592779 · Cited by 3,333
Learning and Teaching Programming: A Review and Discussion
Robins, A., Rountree, J., & Rountree, N. (2003) · Computer Science Education · doi:10.1076/csed.13.2.137.14200 · Cited by 1,736
Student engagement literature review
Trowler, V. (2010) · Cited by 1,078
A study of the difficulties of novice programmers
Lahtinen, E., Ala-Mutka, K., & Järvinen, H.-M. (2005) · Proceedings of the 10th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education · doi:10.1145/1067445.1067453 · Cited by 827
Failure rates in introductory programming revisited
Watson, C., & Li, F. W. B. (2014) · Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Innovation & technology in computer science education - ITiCSE '14 · doi:10.1145/2591708.2591749 · Cited by 639
Failure rates in introductory programming
Bennedsen, J., & Caspersen, M. E. (2007) · ACM SIGCSE Bulletin · doi:10.1145/1272848.1272879 · Cited by 627
A survey of literature on the teaching of introductory programming
Pears, A., Seidman, S., Malmi, L., Mannila, L., Adams, E., Bennedsen, J., Devlin, M., & Paterson, J. (2007) · ACM SIGCSE Bulletin · doi:10.1145/1345375.1345441 · Cited by 481
A study of the difficulties of novice programmers
Lahtinen, E., Ala-Mutka, K., & Järvinen, H.-M. (2005) · ACM SIGCSE Bulletin · doi:10.1145/1151954.1067453 · Cited by 446
A Review of Generic Program Visualization Systems for Introductory Programming Education
Sorva, J., Karavirta, V., & Malmi, L. (2013) · ACM Transactions on Computing Education · doi:10.1145/2490822 · Cited by 366
Cited by
Chatbots applications in education: A systematic review
Okonkwo, C. W., & Ade-Ibijola, A. (2021) · Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence · doi:10.1016/j.caeai.2021.100033 · Cited by 879
Introductory programming: a systematic literature review
Luxton-Reilly, A., Simon, Albluwi, I., Becker, B. A., Giannakos, M., Kumar, A. N., Ott, L., Paterson, J., Scott, M. J., Sheard, J., et al. (2018) · Proceedings Companion of the 23rd Annual ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education · doi:10.1145/3293881.3295779 · Cited by 485
Becker, B. A., Denny, P., Pettit, R., Bouchard, D., Bouvier, D. J., Harrington, B., Kamil, A., Karkare, A., McDonald, C., Osera, P.-M., et al. (2019) · Proceedings of the Working Group Reports on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education · doi:10.1145/3344429.3372508 · Cited by 199
Yang, T.-C., Hsu, Y.-C., & Wu, J.-Y. (2025) · Interactive Learning Environments · doi:10.1080/10494820.2025.2450659 · Cited by 80
Boguslawski, S., Deer, R., & Dawson, M. G. (2025) · Information and Learning Sciences · doi:10.1108/ils-10-2023-0163 · Cited by 66
Metadata
- Authors
- Medeiros, R. P., Ramalho, G. L., & Falcao, T. P.
- Venue
- IEEE Transactions on Education
- Published
- 2019-05
- Volume
- 62
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 77-90
- ISSN
- 0018-9359 (ISSN-L)
- 1557-9638
- OpenAlex
- W2889140186
- Cited by
- 384
- References
- 93
- FWCI
- 4.33
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: A Systematic Literature Review on Teaching and Learning Introductory Programming in Higher Education. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1109/te.2018.2864133
- The paper
- Medeiros, R. P., Ramalho, G. L., & Falcao, T. P. (2019). A Systematic Literature Review on Teaching and Learning Introductory Programming in Higher Education. IEEE Transactions on Education. https://doi.org/10.1109/te.2018.2864133
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
