Teacher Perceptions of Feedback in High School Programming Education: A Thematic Analysis

Fundamental principles of programming are being added to many school curricula world-wide. In New Zealand, digital technologies progress outcomes and assessment standards have recently been added to the national school curriculum. Among other things, the curriculum and assessment standards relate to aspects of code quality and decomposition as well as producing the logic and syntax of functional programs. To understand how teachers provide feedback to support student learning in these areas we conducted a survey relating to feedback on programming in the classroom. The survey focused on subcategories of feedback relating to the syntax, style and semantics of the code. We present the results of the survey which showed several themes that relate to categories of feedback. The paper outlines implications for what further support and research could be valuable.