Relationship Between Text and Action Conceptions of Programming: A Phenomenographic and Quantitative Perspective

摘要

Phenomenographic research studies have identified different understandings of the concepts class and object by novice programmers. Aspects of understanding include a focus on artefacts of text, syntax and structure (text), as active agents in a program (action) and as models of an external reality (model). We explore the hypothesis that these aspects of conceptual understanding form a hierarchy in which mastery of the text aspect is a necessary precondition for understanding objects as active agents and the action aspect is a precondition for model understandings. We use empirical data from the final examination of an introductory programming course to test the relationship between the text and action aspects. Our findings do not support the hypothesis of a hierarchy but rather suggest that text and action understandings develop in parallel.