Leveraging Historical Ties Between Cognitive Science and Computer Science to Guide Programming Education

In the past few years, there has been increasing interest in encouraging more people, regardless of background, to learn to program. In fact, President Obama recently made a statement calling on all children to have the opportunity to learn about computer science [1]. Sites such as code.org promote CS education opportunities for all, citing statistics about STEM jobs and arguing that in the 21st century, knowledge about computer science is foundational [2]. Many institutions of higher education either have programming requirements for non-computer-science majors, or have been expanding programming to non-majors [3,4,5]. At our institution, all first year general engineering students are required to complete an introductory programming module as part of their first-year engineering course, and in general “basic programming skills” is a common desired outcome across engineering curricula [6].