A teacher's view about introductory programming teaching and learning: difficulties, strategies and motivations

The difficulties faced by students and teachers in learning and teaching introductory programming has been a research issue over the years. Programming learning demands effort and motivation. However, demotivation is common in many novice-programming students, who are not able to cope with the natural difficulties associated to programming learning. Since many students lack intrinsic motivation it is up to the teacher to find strategies to help students and keep them motivated during the course. The objective of our research was to know more about the pedagogical and motivational strategies used by teachers in the author's institutions to promote programming student's motivation. So we interviewed teachers with diversified experiences in teaching the first programming course.