Student entrance knowledge, expectations, and motivation within introductory programming courses in Portugal and Serbia

Abstract

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.