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This paper describes a pilot intervention conducted in CS1, in the academic year of 2016-2017. The intervention was based on the work of Dweck, promoting a growth Mindset in an effort to increase performance in introductory programming. The study also examined data from a previous year (as a control group) to compare and contrast the results. Multiple factors related to programming performance were recorded with the control and treatment group, which were measured at multiple intervals throughout the course, to monitor changes as the pilot intervention was implemented. This study found a significant increase in programming performance when the intervention was deployed. However, although performance increased for the treatment group, the average Mindset did not significantly change towards a growth Mindset (replicating the findings of Cutts et al, 2010). To further explore this finding, a preliminary deeper investigation using k-means clustering was carried out. The investigation found that the intervention promoted a growth Mindset for some student profiles and a fixed Mindset for others. This finding is important for educators considering intervention development or implementation of Mindset, and demonstrates that a Mindset intervention may not be suitable for all learners. CCS CONCEPTS • Social and professional topics → Computer science education; CS1.

The SIGCSE Technical Symposium is celebrating its 50th year, and a constant theme throughout this history has been to better understand how novices learn to program. In this paper, we present a perspective on the evolution of introductory programming education research at the Symposium over these 50 years. We also situate the Symposium's impact in the context of the wider literature on introductory programming research. Applying a systematic approach to collecting papers presented at the Symposium that focus on novice programming / CS1, we categorized hundreds of papers according to their main focus, revealing important introductory programming topics and their trends from 1970 to 2018. Some of these topics have faded from prominence and are less relevant today while others, including many topics focused on students-such as making learning programming more appropriate from gender, diversity, accessibility and inclusion standpoints-have garnered significant attention more recently. We present discussions on these trends and in doing so, we provide a checkpoint for introductory programming research. This may provide insights for future research on how we teach novices and how they learn to program. CCS CONCEPTS • Social and professional topics → Computer science education; CS1.

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