An analysis of the difficulties of elementary school students in Python programming learning

Abstract

Software education is spreading all over the world; programming education is being implemented in elementary schools in each country using block-programming language. The block programming language provides a novice environment for easy access, but lacks understanding and teaching all the concepts of programming. There seems to be a need for primary education using textbased programming language for elementary school students. However, the difficulties encountered by learners in typing grammars and commands in textual programming languages could not be completely ruled out. This study aims to investigate the difficulties of learners based on grammatical errors frequently encountered in elementary school students. As a result, the most frequent errors in elementary school students in Python programming were errors caused by missing parentheses, followed by incorrect operator use, assignment of variable values that did not fit the data type, incorrect control statement composition, missing quotes Respectively. This study implies that it provided the improved direction of programming education by identifying the difficulties of learners and presenting practical examples and guidance plans and finding appropriate teaching strategies for text type programming education. © 2018, Insight Society.