Students' Pre-Instruction Programming Perceptions in Upper-Secondary School: Findings from a Diagnostic Pilot

Understanding students' initial conceptions of programming can help teachers prioritize core ideas and anticipate misconceptions before instruction begins. This pilot study reports on a pre-instruction diagnostic administered to Grade 11 students in one upper-secondary school. The instrument, composed of multiple-choice and True/False items aligned with five conceptual clusters (definition of a program, language recognition, variables and data, basic conditionals, and elementary loop semantics), was designed to reveal common novice difficulties documented in the literature. Analyses of students' responses indicated partial familiarity with simple control constructs but persistent weaknesses in foundational areas, including distinguishing a program from an algorithm, understanding variables as memory locations, and recognizing the role of guard change in loop termination. A consistent format effect favored recognition-based True/False items over multiple-choice discrimination, suggesting that early instruction should bridge from recognition to explanation and short code construction. Although limited by its single-site scope, the pilot provides a practical baseline for refining diagnostic tools and informing initial instructional sequencing in upper-secondary programming.