There has been surprisingly little systematic analysis of mental or other processes by which discoveries are made or of the role of theory in leading to scientific, and especially medical, discoveries. A great many poets have written about their own inspiration. Lowe's magnificent "Road to Xanadu" comes close to telling us exactly where Coleridge got many of his ideas for the "Ancient Mariner" and "Kubla Khan." Some biographies of scientists include comments on the circumstances under which inspiration occurred and led to important new insights in medicine. But for the most part there is silence and a void. What people forget so regularly is that discovery is not very apt to come from the analysis of vast quantities of more or less mechanically collected data; that ideas and the insights which go to make up theory and lead to discovery have just as real impetus from inspiration as do the

Patterns of Discovery : An Inquiry into the Conceptual Foundations of Science.

Abstract It is critical to teach all learners to program and think through programming. But to do so requires that early childhood teacher candidates learn to teach computer science. This in turn requires novel pedagogy that can both help such teachers learn the needed skills, but also provide a model for their future teaching. In this study, we examined how early childhood teacher candidates learned to program and debug block-based code with and without scaffolding. We aimed to see how approaches to debugging vary between early childhood teacher candidates who were provided debugging scaffolds during block-based programming and those who were not. This qualitative case study focused on 13 undergraduates majoring in early childhood education. Data sources included video recording during debugging, semi-structured interviews, and (in the case of those who used scaffolding) scaffold responses. Research team members coded data independently and then came to consensus. With hypothesis-driven scaffolds, participants persisted longer. Use of scaffolds enabled the instructor to allow struggle without immediate help for participants. Collaborative reasoning was observed among the scaffolded participants whereas the participants without scaffolds often debugged alone. Regardless of scaffolds, participants often engaged in embodied debugging and also used trial and error. This study provides evidence that one can find success debugging even when engaging in trial and error. This implies that attempting to prevent trial and error may be counterproductive in some contexts. Rather, computer science educators may be advised to promote productive struggle. 

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Debugging behaviors of early childhood teacher candidates with or without scaffolding

Preparing pre-service early childhood teachers to teach mathematics with robots

/pdf/debugging-behaviors-of-early-childhood-teacher-candidates-23lbkygr.pdf

For computer science to be for all students, coding needs to be integrated within existing curricula for authentic and interdisciplinary computer science learning. The present study examined the use of transformative pedagogy of teaching coding through argumentation, specifically focusing on how teachers conceptualized teaching coding through argumentation. Fourteen elementary teachers learned coding and argumentation in a semester-long professional learning course. Participating teachers’ coding knowledge, views of coding, and beliefs about using argumentation in teaching coding were examined. A concurrent triangulation mixed methods design was used. Quantitative data included coding exams and surveys and qualitative data included interviews and course artifacts. Study findings include: (a) there were sustained groups with more complete coding knowledge and less complete coding knowledge throughout the semester, (b) coding was often viewed as a means to create another modality for other subject teaching with no difficulty of integration, (c) a few teachers articulated their beliefs about using argumentation in teaching coding with concrete relational connection to coding, and (d) teachers who consistently exhibited more complete coding knowledge conceptualized teaching coding with argumentation in more concrete ways. 

Learning to Teach Coding through Argumentation

Tinkering is often viewed as arbitrary practice that should be avoided. However, tinkering can be performed as part of a sound reasoning process. In this ethnomethodological study, we investigated ...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/23328584211008111

An Ethnomethodological Study of Abductive Reasoning While Tinkering

Contribution: This study indicates that supporting debugging processes is a strong method to improve debugging outcome quality among preservice, early childhood education (ECE) teachers. Background: Central to preparing ECE teachers to teach computer science is helping them learn to debug. Little is known about how ECE teachers’ motivation and debugging process quality contributes to debugging outcome quality. Research Questions: How do debugging process and motivation variables predict the quality with which participants debug lower and higher complexity programs? Method: A Bayesian multiple linear regression model with debugging process and motivation variables as predictors was used to predict debugging outcome quality. An inverse gamma prior distribution for sigma2 and uniform prior distribution for Betas was used. Findings: The strongest positive predictor of debugging outcome quality for both the lower complexity and higher complexity debugging task was debugging process quality.

Using Process and Motivation Data to Predict the Quality With Which Preservice Teachers Debugged Higher and Lower Complexity Programs

Analogical reasoning is considered to be a critical cognitive skill in programming. However, it has been rarely studied in a block-based programming context, especially involving both virtual and physical objects. In this multi-case study, we examined how novice programming learners majoring in early childhood education used analogical reasoning while debugging block code to make a robot perform properly. Screen recordings, scaffolding entries, reflections, and block code were analyzed. The cross-case analysis suggested multimodal objects enabled the novice programming learners to identify and use structural relations. The use of a robot eased the verification process by enabling them to test their analogies immediately after the analogy application. Noticing similar functional analogies led to noticing similarities in the relation between block code as well as between block code and the robot, guiding to locate bugs. Implications and directions for future educational computing research are discussed.

Afaf A. Baabdullah

Papers

An Ethnomethodological Study of Abductive Reasoning While Tinkering

Using Process and Motivation Data to Predict the Quality With Which Preservice Teachers Debugged Higher and Lower Complexity Programs

Revisiting Analogical Reasoning in Computing Education: Use of Similarities Between Robot Programming Tasks in Debugging