Programming Misconceptions

2025

Surveying Upper-Secondary Teachers on Programming Misconceptions

Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research - Volume 1

Background and Context Misconceptions in programming have been studied extensively, but most research focuses on uncovering and assessing misconceptions in students. When teachers are involved, it is usually only to elicit their perspective on misconceptions in their students. However, there is no guarantee that teachers do not hold misconceptions themselves. Detecting the possible presence of misconceptions in teachers is a crucial step for improving their content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge, which benefits hundreds of students each year.

Authors:

Python

Quantitative systematic research

97 Swiss high school teachers and their students

https://zenodo.org/records/15633868

Misconception

= compares two values

Misconception

Assignment copies the object

Misconception

To test whether an expression is true or false, one must compare it to true or to false

Misconception

If-else is equivalent to sequence of two ifs

Misconception

A return statement in the middle of a method doesn't return immediately

Misconception

The body of an if statement executes repeatedly, as long as the condition holds

Misconception

To map a boolean expression to a boolean, an if statement is necessary

Misconception

Expressions must consist of more than one piece

Misconception

Every sequence of letters and digits starting with a letter can be used as an identifier

Misconception

&& and || always evaluate both operands

Misconception

Nested method calls are invoked outside in

Misconception

() are optional for method calls without arguments

Misconception

Return statements need () around the return value

Misconception

A return statement can unwind multiple call stack frames

Misconception

= stores an expression in a variable

Misconception

= compares two values

Misconception

Assignment copies the object

Misconception

To test whether an expression is True or False, one must compare it to True or to False

Misconception

If-else is equivalent to sequence of two ifs

Misconception

A return statement in the middle of a function doesn't return immediately

Misconception

The body of an if-statement executes repeatedly, as long as the condition holds

Misconception

To map a boolean expression to a bool, an if statement is necessary

Misconception

Functions can return multiple values

Misconception

Expressions must consist of more than one piece

Misconception

Every sequence of letters and digits starting with a letter or an underscore can be used as an identifier

Misconception

and/or always evaluate both operands

Misconception

Nested function calls are invoked outside in

Misconception

() are optional for function calls without arguments

Misconception

A return statement can unwind multiple call stack frames

Misconception

= stores an expression: it stores a reference to the expression in a variable

Misconception

Return statements need () around the return value

Misconception

Assignment copies the object

Misconception

Expressions must consist of more than one piece

Misconception

To test whether an expression evaluates to true or false, one must compare it to a constant

Programming Language

Notional Machine

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