A model to develop activities for teaching programming through metacognitive strategies

•A framework for integrating metacognitive strategies to the programming teaching process is suggested.•Suggested framework includes metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive regulation dimensions.•A worksheet is constructed to guide students to activate their metacognition skills.•The suggested framework with the worksheet is pilot tested and validated to be used in the undergraduate introductory programming classrooms. Among many endeavors to explore ways to effective teaching programming in classrooms, focusing on metacognition is somewhat neglected. This study suggests a framework for integrating metacognitive strategies to the programming teaching process. In order to achieve this, the knowledge and skills required for writing quality programs and the nature of the metacognition is interrelated with each other encompassing problem solving strategies with programming. The framework has two dimensions; one is metacognitive knowledge including conditional, procedure and declarative knowledge and the other is metacognitive regulation including planning, monitoring and evaluating activities embodied in a specialized worksheet. The activities were designed to be implemented in three phases of programming: at the beginning of the programming, during the programming and after finishing the programming. The suggested framework with the worksheet is pilot tested and validated to be used in the undergraduate introductory programming classrooms. We hope that the suggested roadmap may contribute to the instructional designers and researchers in the field of programming teaching and evaluation.