Effectiveness of Flowcharting as a Scaffolding Tool to Learn Python

This Research to Practice Full Paper evaluates the effectiveness of flowcharting as a scaffolding tool to learn a programming language like Python in the setting of an urban institution that serves mostly underrepresented minority students. We found that the abilities of students to solve problems using flowcharts is a good predictor of their ability to solve problems with Python (r-squared = 0.68). This means that the majority of students who perform well using flowcharts will perform well in Python. A majority of students found flowcharting easier than Python (63%), and reported that flowcharting helped them understand how to write programs in Python (73%). However, flowcharting is not a magic bullet for learning programming because about 31% of students have difficulty solving problems with a flowcharting tool (and Python). We also found that the ability of students to read code is not highly correlated with their ability to write code in Python. In conclusion: 1) For a majority of students flowcharting is an effective scaffolding tool to learn Python; 2) The ability to read and trace code is not predictive of the ability of students to solve problems and write viable programs in Python.