There is general consensus that recursion is difficult to learn, which may be meant to imply that novice students are more at ease with iteration --- probably a widespread perception of students themselves. However, three years of investigation in a context where recursion is introduced earlier than iteration, as well as control experiments for a standard imperative-first introduction to programming, have provided no evidence that students make more progress with iteration than they do with recursion. More specifically, by means of a pair of questionnaires devised for this purpose, two research questions have been addressed. First, do the students who learned recursion before iteration actually exhibit a stronger ability to deal with the latter? Second, do the students of the imperative-first path master iteration better than those of the recursion-earlier path?

Is iteration really easier to learn than recursion for CS1 students?

MIROLO, Claudio
2012-01-01

Abstract

There is general consensus that recursion is difficult to learn, which may be meant to imply that novice students are more at ease with iteration --- probably a widespread perception of students themselves. However, three years of investigation in a context where recursion is introduced earlier than iteration, as well as control experiments for a standard imperative-first introduction to programming, have provided no evidence that students make more progress with iteration than they do with recursion. More specifically, by means of a pair of questionnaires devised for this purpose, two research questions have been addressed. First, do the students who learned recursion before iteration actually exhibit a stronger ability to deal with the latter? Second, do the students of the imperative-first path master iteration better than those of the recursion-earlier path?
2012
9781450316040
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11390/866199
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