A teacher's view about introductory programming teaching and learning — Portuguese and Macanese perspectives

The difficulties faced by students and teachers in learning and teaching introductory programming has been a research issue over the years. Demotivation is common in many novice programming students, who are not able to cope with the natural difficulties associated to programming learning. It is up to the teacher to find strategies to help students and keep them motivated during the course. The objective of our research was to know more about the pedagogical and motivational strategies used by teachers in the author's institutions to promote programming student's motivation and learning. Some time ago we interviewed a few Portuguese teachers with diversified experiences in programming teaching. Recently we had the opportunity to do the same kind of research with Professors from Macao (China). The problems identified, the teachers' motivation to teach programming, the educational and motivational strategies and the student-teacher relationship were specifically addressed. This paper describes the research done, stressing the Macanese teacher's views and relating them with the views previously expressed by their Portuguese colleagues.