Guest Editorial

Abstract

All research, whether qualitative or quantitative, basic or applied, disciplinespecific or interdisciplinary, is based on theory (Flynn, Sakakibara, Schroeder, Bates, & Flynn, 1990). Theory helps us to understand why things happen when much of our data tells us only what is happening. Whether the theory develops as a logical extension of related concepts (deductively) or in response to the observation of an unexplained phenomenon (inductively), the rigor that supports theory building affords a level of interpretation and generalizability that can have a snowball effect on later progress in research and implementation. Building theory does come with substantial costs, but they are worthwhile. First, to build upon theory, researchers must be familiar with the latest literature on related topics. Processing and incorporating this information serve to improve our work by incorporating multiple viewpoints and factors into a nuanced understanding of phenomena and the variables that affect them. Second, theory building requires isolating or simultaneously examining multiple facets of key variables. Everything else must remain constant or be constantly mutable to understand the effect that variables have. This rigorous approach means effecting only incremental changes to learning environments over time. Slow progress can be difficult to accept from a practical standpoint in which we are preoccupied with helping the students we know personally as quickly as possible. However, building theory allows us to understand how to better help our future students and many others, accelerating our progress toward computing literacy for all. In this special issue, we aim to reduce the costs for researchers who are studying how novices learn programming. We have selected papers that provide comprehensive literature reviews across several areas of interest, including K-12, higher education, sociocultural and cognitive factors. The literature reviews inform rigorous empirical studies and systematic literature reviews that build theory about novice programmers. By developing sound foundations, the theory-focused papers in this issue provide a strong basis for future work in both theory and design. In the first article, Concepts before Coding: Non-Programming Interactives to Advance Learning of Introductory Programming Concepts in Middle School, Grover, Jackiw and Lundh explore methods of teaching programming concepts without requiring programming. They identified four concepts that middle school students tend to struggle with and developed nonprogramming activities, both digital and unplugged, to help students learn COMPUTER SCIENCE EDUCATION 2019, VOL. 29, NOS. 2–3, 103–105 https://doi.org/10.1080/08993408.2019.1613091