Integrating Students’ Prior Knowledge into Pedagogy

1. Integrating Students’ Prior Knowledge into Pedagogy Colleen Lewis Graduate School of Education University of California, Berkeley

2. The Problem “Part of the problem is that the subject is not widely taught at school, so undergraduates arrive without having being streamedinto those who can do well and those who can't.” Bornat, Dehnadi, & Simon, 2008

3. AP Test Taking Rates Number of test takers 300,000 200,000 100,000 1997 2009 Source: College Board Exam Volume Data

4. 2010 AP Test Takers (% Female)

6. Problem 2: Bimodal Distribution

8. Problem 3: Community Discourse “The literature abounds in assertions of the existence of an aptitude for programming, and of attempts to find a suitable predictor for that aptitude so as to avoid wasting time and effort educating students who are unlikely ever to become good programmers.” Simon et al.2006

9. Problem 3: Community Discourse • “innate talent for programming” • Lister et al., 2004 • “a fundamental ability” • Reges, 2006 • “Introductory classes should weed students out based on ability and potential” • Barker, McDowell & Kalahar, 2009

10. What factors predict success? • Problem solving • Explanation skills • Abstraction skills • Math experience • SAT scores • Programming pre-tests

11. Hypothesis Student success is shaped by the degree to which they make productive use of their non-programming competence when learning to program.

12. Research Questions • What knowledge and skills do students use when solving computer science problems? • How can we build upon students’ non-programming knowledge? • How can we integrate these techniques into curriculum?

13. Phase 1 Research Question: • What knowledge and skills do students use when solving computer science problems? Example Interview Problem: • If b is a Boolean variable, then the statement below has what effect? b = (b == false);

14. Phase 2 Research Question: • How can we build upon students’ non-programming knowledge? Study Design • Design-based research • Recruit struggling students

15. Phase 3 Research Question: • How can we integrate these techniques into curriculum? Study Design • Techniques integrated into existing course • Quasi-experimental design

16. Example Analysis What value is returned by WhatIsIt(4, 4)? (define (WhatIsIt x n) (if (= n 1) x (* x (WhatIsIt x (- n 1))))

17. WhatIsIt Solution

18. Using Critical Reading Skills (define (WhatIsIt x n) (if (= n 1) x (* x (WhatIsIt x (- n 1))))

19. Critical Reading Skills • Rephrasing • Summarizing • Re-reading

20. State • What line of code is being executed? • What are the values of all variables? • What calls proceeded the current call? • How can I change the line of code executed? • How can I change the values of variables? • How can I sequence procedure calls?

21. Tracking State

22. Tracking State

23. Experience with State

24. Tracking State

25. Tracking State

26. Tracking State

27. Problems • Students have a rich set of non-programming skills before college. • No explanations for why well prepared students fail to learn • We do not know how to build upon this knowledge.

28. Approach Phase 1 • Identify techniques Phase 2 • Develop and refine teaching strategies Phase 3 • Analyze effectiveness

29. Thank you! Questions? Colleen Lewis Graduate School of Education University of California, Berkeley