Investigating Teachers’ Diagnostic and Intervention Skills in Debugging

Students often struggle with debugging in the K-12 classroom. Supporting them individually provides a huge challenge for teachers, as they have to grasp the problem, diagnose why the student is stuck, and react with an appropriate intervention without simply specifying the solution in a very short amount of time. To this end, teachers need corresponding diagnostic and intervention skills, a core component of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). However, such skills – as well as debugging in general – typically only play a minor role in teacher education. Therefore, we present a research project to investigate and foster teachers’ diagnostic and intervention skills in debugging. As a first step, we analyzed teachers’ perceptions of typical problems students have in debugging and how teachers support them using a persona approach. The first findings reveal some common problems and a spectrum of interventions and feedback teachers use to support students.