Pre-service and in-service teachers experiences of learning to program in an object-oriented language Presenter: Ku-Chou Tai Advisor: Ming-Puu Chen Govender, I. & Grayson, G. J.(2008). Pre-service and in-service teachers experiences of learning to program in an object-oriented language. Computers & Education, 51, 874–885.

Agenda Introduction Results Implications for teaching Conclusion Methodology Results Implications for teaching Conclusion

Introduction 1/4 There is general agreement in the literature that learning to program is no easy task (Kolling, 1999; Jenkins,2002). Even when students do successfully complete introductory courses, there is a strong possibility that many of them will still not be able to program (McCracken et al., 2001). Results from a recent project by McCracken et al. (2001) are compelling, because of the number of authors from differing educational institutions and cultures.

Introduction 2/4 There has been considerable debate at higher education institutions about when and how object-oriented programming should be taught in introductory programming courses (Zhu & Zhou, 2003; Kolling, 1999; Kolling & Rosenberg, 2001). One of the debates is whether OOP(Object-Oriented Programming) should be taught in a language-free scenario (Fincher, 1999). The language used is merely meant to be a means to achieve this purpose.

Introduction 3/4 In a study of conceptual structures of novice programmers (Petre et al., 2003), there is evidence that the current methods of teaching the OOP languages Java and C++ have overwhelmed the students. Effective teachers of any subject, programming included, need detailed knowledge about not only their subject matter but also about subject matter for teaching. This type of knowledge is what Shulman (1986) calls pedagogical content knowledge (PCK).

Introduction 4/4 The study was carried out with a group of pre-service computing teachers, most of whom were learning to program for the first time, and a group of in-service computing teachers, most of whom had experience in programming in a procedural language. In this paper we describe the method used to identify different categories of the experience of learning to program, namely, phenomenography.

Methodology 1/5 The research method(phenomenography)used in this study to identify and categorise different experiences of learning to program is phenomenography, originally developed by Ference Marton (1981). Marton (1986, p.31) describes phenomenography as a method ‘‘for investigating the qualitatively different ways in which people experience, conceptualise, perceive and understand various aspects of, and phenomena in, the world around them’’.

Methodology 2/5 Phenomenographers are not only interested in the variation in ways of experiencing a particular phenomenon, but also in the ‘‘change in capabilities’’ for experiencing particular phenomena in the world.. Differences between them may be ‘‘educationally critical’’ (Marton & Booth, 1997, pp. 125-126) differences, and changes between them are considered to be the most important kind of learning.

Methodology 3/5 The categories of description must meet the following criteria: each category tells us something distinct about a particular way of experiencing the phenomenon; the categories have to stand in a logical relationship with one another and can be hierarchically arranged; and as few categories should be explicated as is feasible and reasonable, for capturing the critical variation in the data (Marton & Booth, 1997, p. 125).

Methodology 4/5 The set of categories of description capturing the different ways of experiencing a phenomenon is called the ‘‘outcome space’’ (Marton, 1992b). Two groups of students were used in the study: one group of 315 in-service teachers and the other group of 12 pre-service teachers. The primary data source for this study comprised journals that students were required to keep as part of both courses.

Methodology 4/5 The phenomenographic analysis of the data on students’ experiences of learning to program involved three stages : The first stage was to identify a set of qualitatively different categories of description of students’ experiences. The second stage consisted of classifying the in-service and pre-service teachers’ responses into these categories. In the third stage the analysis involved integrating students’ interpretations and explanations into a coherent description, resulting in the creation of an outcome space.

Results 1/2 Analysis of the data yielded five categories describing students’ experiences of learning to program: (1) meeting the requirements (2) learning the syntax/learning by comparison (3) understanding and assimilating, (4) problem solving, (5) programming in the large. The categories describe the qualitative variation in the ways the students experienced learning to program.

Results 2/2

Implications for teaching 1/3 (1) meeting the requirements Frequent and smaller assessment units may encourage students to learn and move from this level to one that is more desirable, provided the focus of the assessment tasks is on understanding and problem-solving. (2) learning the syntax/learning by comparison Instructors can help by highlighting key aspects of OOP so that identifying objects and making use of classes become the main focus.

Implications for teaching 2/3 (3) understanding and assimilating Visual tools such as memory diagrams are useful aids in helping students grasp the meaning and execution of a program. Requiring students to read code and understand the execution of a program is an important strategy, before expecting them to write a good program themselves.

Implications for teaching 3/3 (4) problem solving When students see learning to program in this way the following sequence is useful: pose the problem, discuss the problem in order to clarify it, show how the current programming constructs may be inadequate and then introduce new programming constructs to meet the need. (5) programming in the large This kind of experience would involve assessments that are regarded as authentic (Wiggins, 1990), which would prepare students for the real situation.

Conclusion 1/2 In this study phenomenography was used to identify categories of description of the experience of learning to program in an object-oriented language for in-service and pre-service teachers. These five categories were arranged hierarchically to create an outcome space. It is important for teachers to have not only content knowledge and general pedagogical knowledge butalso subject-specific knowledge for teaching, or pedagogical content knowledge.

Conclusion 2/2 We suggest that the outcome space generated in this study constitutes one useful component of future and current teachers’ PCK. There is a hierarchy of ways of experiencing learning to program, progressing from less to more cognitively demanding and less to more effective then one aspect of the teacher’s role is to assist students to move up this hierarchy.