Although a number of studies report about novices’ diffi-culties with basic flow-control constructs, concerning both the under-standing of the underlying notional machine and the logical connectionswith the application domain, this issues have not yet been extensivelyexplored in the context of high-school education. As part of a projectwhose long-run goal is identifying methodological tools to improve thelearning of iteration, we analyzed how a sample of 164 high-school stu-dents’ approached three small programming tasks involving basic loopingconstructs, as well as two questions on their subjective perception of dif-ficulty. If, on the one hand, most students seem to have developed aviable mental model of the basic workings of the underlying machine,on the other, dealing at a more abstract level with loop conditions andnested flow-control structures appears to be challenging. As to the impli-cations for teachers, the results of the analysis suggest that more effortsshould be addressed to develop a method for testing the conjecturesabout program behavior, as well as to the treatment of loop conditionsin connection with the problem statement.

An Exploratory Study of Students' Mastery of Iteration in the High School

Emanuele Scapin
Primo
;
Claudio Mirolo
Secondo
2020-01-01

Abstract

Although a number of studies report about novices’ diffi-culties with basic flow-control constructs, concerning both the under-standing of the underlying notional machine and the logical connectionswith the application domain, this issues have not yet been extensivelyexplored in the context of high-school education. As part of a projectwhose long-run goal is identifying methodological tools to improve thelearning of iteration, we analyzed how a sample of 164 high-school stu-dents’ approached three small programming tasks involving basic loopingconstructs, as well as two questions on their subjective perception of dif-ficulty. If, on the one hand, most students seem to have developed aviable mental model of the basic workings of the underlying machine,on the other, dealing at a more abstract level with loop conditions andnested flow-control structures appears to be challenging. As to the impli-cations for teachers, the results of the analysis suggest that more effortsshould be addressed to develop a method for testing the conjecturesabout program behavior, as well as to the treatment of loop conditionsin connection with the problem statement.
File in questo prodotto:
File Dimensione Formato  
scapin_mirolo_paper4.pdf

accesso aperto

Descrizione: Articolo principale
Tipologia: Versione Editoriale (PDF)
Licenza: Creative commons
Dimensione 707.1 kB
Formato Adobe PDF
707.1 kB Adobe PDF Visualizza/Apri

I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11390/1194861
Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? ND
  • Scopus 0
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? ND
social impact