Mathematics and programming: some studies

Learning how to develop a program is known to be a difficult task to many novice students. This is a problem to which, neither the traditional teaching methods nor the more sophisticated methods based on computational tools already proposed have been able to meet. According to the related literature and our own experience as teachers, there seems to be a set of causes responsible for this problem. It is our opinion the most important cause is the lack of good generic problem solving skills, especially those related to mathematical methods and models for solving problems. The current undergoing work focuses on this assumption and this paper reports specific experiences carried out during the years of 2006/2007 and 2007/2008, directed to explore possible relations between deficient mathematical problem solving competences and the lack of programming abilities shown by a group of students who failed their initial programming course.