ABSTRACT

208Systematic study of the relationship between instructional practice and learning outcomes can help to build powerful instructional theories. This study examines relationships between students’ programming proficiency and instructional conditions in 14 high-school Pascal programming classes. To establish programming proficiency, we assessed students’ ability to write programs and students’ ability to understand, modify, and analyze programs written by experts. Both students’ and teachers’ perceptions of instructional conditions were used to characterize the learning environment. We found that instructional conditions predicted student performance on each measure of programming proficiency. Effective instructional conditions included: (a) extensive on-line access; (b) explicit instruction; and (c) frequent feedback. Further, we found that the pattern of programming proficiency varied with classroom conditions. The results help clarify the nature of exemplary instructional environments and suggest principles for instructional theory.