Metacognition and Self-Regulation in Programming Education: Theories and Exemplars of Use

Abstract

Metacognition and self-regulation are important skills for successful learning and have been discussed and researched extensively in the general education literature for several decades. More recently, there has been growing interest in understanding how metacognitive and self-regulatory skills contribute to student success in the context of computing education. This paper presents a thorough systematic review of metacognition and self-regulation work in the context of computer programming and an in-depth discussion of the theories that have been leveraged in some way. We also discuss several prominent metacognitive and self-regulation theories from the literature outside of computing education – for example, from psychology and education – that have yet to be applied in the context of programming education. In our investigation, we built a comprehensive corpus of papers on metacognition and self-regulation in programming education, and then employed backward snowballing to provide a deeper examination of foundational theories from outside computing education, some of which have been explored in programming education, and others that have yet to be but hold much promise. In addition, we make new observations about the way these theories are used by the computing education community, and present recommendations on how metacognition and self-regulation can help inform programming education in the future. In particular, we discuss exemplars of studies that have used existing theories to support their design and discussion of results as well as studies that have proposed their own metacognitive theories in the context of programming education. Readers will also find the article a useful resource for helping students in programming courses develop effective strategies for metacognition and self-regulation.

Shoot2Learn: Fix-and-Play Educational Game for Learning Programming; Enhancing Student Engagement by Mixing Game Playing and Game Programming

“…However, in 2015, Robins stated, "After several decades of research on the core topic of programming, ---, we still don't have a consensus on the reasons why so many novice programmers fail to learn ---" (Robins, 2015, Editorial). Some recent studies also support Robins' observation and suggest further investigation in this area is continuously required (Loksa et al, 2022;Smith, 2022). Various studies show that designing games, as well as playing games, do help novices focus on learning programming (Sharmin, 2022).…”

Fostering regulatory processes using computational scaffolding

“…Initial findings support an association between SRL and achievement in the domain of computer programming (Loksa et al, 2022 ). Researchers were interested in identifying the regulatory strategies that emerged in this learning domain, which were classified as general-purpose regulatory strategies, such as the establishment of educational goals and metacognitive monitoring, and programming specific regulatory strategies, such as drawing flowcharts 1 (Falkner et al, 2014 ).…”

“…SRL is necessary for successful learning in multiple educational contexts, including programming education (Loksa et al, 2022 ). However, students often face regulatory difficulties that can negatively impact their academic performance (Loksa et al, 2020 ).…”

“…In the context of introductory programming education, several CBLEs were proposed to support SRL (Loksa et al, 2022 ). However, most of them conceptualized the regulation of learning as an individual process, neglecting the potential influence of the social context (Silva et al, 2021a ).…”

“…The use of SRL theory to study learning of computer programmng has gained traction in recent years (Loksa et al, 2022 ). Nevertheless, many questions already consolidated in other educational contexts are still open, such as how SRL occurs in this learning domain and how it could be stimulated (Prather et al, 2020 ).…”