Constructivism in computer science education
Journal of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching
Working group reports from ITiCSE on Innovation and technology in computer science education
Communications of the ACM
Investigating the viability of mental models held by novice programmers
Proceedings of the 38th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
ITiCSE '09 Proceedings of the 14th annual ACM SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
Need to consider variations within demographic groups when evaluating educational interventions
ITiCSE '09 Proceedings of the 14th annual ACM SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
Analysis of research into the teaching and learning of programming
ICER '09 Proceedings of the fifth international workshop on Computing education research workshop
The same but different students' understandings of primitive and object variables
Koli '08 Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Computing Education Research
Proceedings of the 43rd ACM technical symposium on Computer Science Education
Trace-based teaching in early programming courses
Proceeding of the 44th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education
Defining and evaluating conflictive animations for programming education: the case of jeliot ConAn
Proceedings of the 45th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education
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Recent research has found that many novice programmers often hold non-viable mental models of basic programming concepts such as assignment and object reference, which can limit their potential to develop programming skills. This paper proposes a constructivist-based teaching model that integrates cognitive conflict and program visualisation with the aim of supporting novice programmers in the formulation of appropriate mental models. The results of an initial empirical study produced three findings of note. Firstly, a teaching model based on either visualisation alone or cognitive conflict integrated with visualisation can help students develop viable models of value assignment. Secondly, there was evidence to suggest that cognitive conflict integrated with visualisation outperformed visualisation alone in helping students develop viable models of the more challenging concept of object reference assignment. And thirdly, there was evidence of an improvement in students' understanding of value and object reference assignment using the teaching model based on visualisation and cognitive conflict.