Relationship between text and action conceptions of programming: a phenomenographic and quantitative perspective

Authors:
Anna Eckerdal;Mikko-Jussi Laakso;Mike Lopez;Amitrajit Sarkar
Affiliations:
Uppsala University, Uppsala , Sweden;University of Turku, Turku, Finland;Manukau Institute of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand;Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology, Christchurch , New Zealand
Venue:
Proceedings of the 16th annual joint conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
Year:
2011

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Abstract

Phenomenographic research studies have identified different understandings of the concepts class and object by novice programmers. Aspects of understanding include a focus on artefacts of text, syntax and structure (text), as active agents in a program (action) and as models of an external reality (model). We explore the hypothesis that these aspects of conceptual understanding form a hierarchy in which mastery of the text aspect is a necessary precondition for understanding objects as active agents and the action aspect is a precondition for model understandings. We use empirical data from the final examination of an introductory programming course to test the relationship between the text and action aspects. Our findings do not support the hypothesis of a hierarchy but rather suggest that text and action understandings develop in parallel.