> Beyond that the strongest interpretation would be that students with misconceptions are less likely to succeed in traditionally taught CS courses You don't e

> Beyond that the strongest interpretation would be that students with misconceptions are less likely to succeed in traditionally taught CS courses You don't even have to go that far. When I tutored people in programming (years ago at university I tutored fellow business studies students for 2 years), I found that if I could identify their misconceptions and work through the misconceptions with them that they could indeed resolve their challenges with programming. At best all these papers can say is that these people were unable to build an adequate mental model of programming by themselves (yes they presumably had access to tutors but that doesn't mean the tutors were sufficiently skilled, or that they used the tutors). There is nothing to suggest that spending some time working on their misconceptions with them couldn't have changed that result.