{"title":"Understanding loops: What are the misconceptions of lower-secondary pupils?","authors":"J. Vaníček, Václav Dobiáš, Václav Šimandl","doi":"10.15388/infedu.2023.20","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The article describes a study carried out on pupils aged 12-13 with no prior programming experience. The study examined how they learn to use loops with a fixed number of repetitions. Pupils were given a set of programming tasks to solve, without any preparatory or accompanying instruction or explanation, in a block-based visual programming environment. Pupils’ programs were analyzed to identify possible misconceptions and factors influencing them. Four misconceptions involving comprehension of the loop concept and repeat command were detected. Some of these misconceptions were found to have an impact on a pupil’s need to ask the computer to check the correctness of his/her program. Some of the changes made to tasks had an impact on the frequency of these misconceptions and could be the factors influencing them. Teachers and course book writers will be able to use the results of our research to create an appropriate curriculum. This will enable pupils to acquire and subsequently deal with misconceptions that could prevent the correct understanding of created concepts.","PeriodicalId":45270,"journal":{"name":"Informatics in Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1000,"publicationDate":"2022-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"2","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Informatics in Education","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.15388/infedu.2023.20","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Abstract
The article describes a study carried out on pupils aged 12-13 with no prior programming experience. The study examined how they learn to use loops with a fixed number of repetitions. Pupils were given a set of programming tasks to solve, without any preparatory or accompanying instruction or explanation, in a block-based visual programming environment. Pupils’ programs were analyzed to identify possible misconceptions and factors influencing them. Four misconceptions involving comprehension of the loop concept and repeat command were detected. Some of these misconceptions were found to have an impact on a pupil’s need to ask the computer to check the correctness of his/her program. Some of the changes made to tasks had an impact on the frequency of these misconceptions and could be the factors influencing them. Teachers and course book writers will be able to use the results of our research to create an appropriate curriculum. This will enable pupils to acquire and subsequently deal with misconceptions that could prevent the correct understanding of created concepts.
期刊介绍:
INFORMATICS IN EDUCATION publishes original articles about theoretical, experimental and methodological studies in the fields of informatics (computer science) education and educational applications of information technology, ranging from primary to tertiary education. Multidisciplinary research studies that enhance our understanding of how theoretical and technological innovations translate into educational practice are most welcome. We are particularly interested in work at boundaries, both the boundaries of informatics and of education. The topics covered by INFORMATICS IN EDUCATION will range across diverse aspects of informatics (computer science) education research including: empirical studies, including composing different approaches to teach various subjects, studying availability of various concepts at a given age, measuring knowledge transfer and skills developed, addressing gender issues, etc. statistical research on big data related to informatics (computer science) activities including e.g. research on assessment, online teaching, competitions, etc. educational engineering focusing mainly on developing high quality original teaching sequences of different informatics (computer science) topics that offer new, successful ways for knowledge transfer and development of computational thinking machine learning of student''s behavior including the use of information technology to observe students in the learning process and discovering clusters of their working design and evaluation of educational tools that apply information technology in novel ways.