-----Original Message-----
From: Lindsay Marshall [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tue 6/26/2007 4:27 PM
To: Guzdial, Mark; Peter Gutmann; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; discuss@ppig.org; [EMAIL
PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: PPIG discuss: Programmer education argument-starter of the week
> We know relatively little about what leads to success in programming.
An interesting question then is how much we know about learning anything! Why
do we think learning to program is different from learning anything else?
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AGREED! Great question!
Learning to program can't be different from any other kind of learning.
Programming is too new to believe that we have evolved any particular new forms
of learning that are particular to programming. You can pick your favorite
neural or cognitive model of learning -- it's got to be the same for
programming as math, art, science, or engineering.
The reason for studying how people learn (and not learn) to program is because
we can help them to do it better by understanding the domain and the task of
learning that domain. For example, Gerhard Fischer (with John Seely Brown)
wrote an article many years ago now about how skiing instruction was
dramatically improved by considering how to use scaffolding to make it easier
to focus on one skill at a time.
The domain-specific education field that has made the most progress is
mathematics education (though reading education may be as advanced).
Mathematics education researchers have studied how children come to learn the
concept of number, and in so doing, have learned about previously invisible
enabling skills which, if missing, inhibit a child from learning mathematics.
My favorite of these is subitizing. Subitizing is the ability to look at a set
of items and know how many are there without counting. Everybody can do it for
one to three items. More than that, we have to count--unless the items are in
a well-known shape (like five or six on a die or a domino). Math ed
researchers have found that the lack of subitizing skill (especially for sets
of five and ten) inhibits later math learning. They have found ways of testing
for subitizing skill and helping students develop that skill in preschool so
that their math development isn't inhibited.
What are the computing/programming analogous skills to subitizing? Let's
consider the students who aren't learning to program in all our experiences.
If we're agreed that there is no "geek gene," then it's not nature -- it must
be nurture. The students who are learning to program have had some experience
which has led to learning some skill/concept that the other students don't
have. What might that be?
- Maybe our students who learn to program more easily have more experience
writing down or executing instructions? Maybe they have a stronger
understanding of some underlying concept of what it means to define a process
for another agent?
- Maybe our students who learn to program more easily have had more experience
thinking about repetitive tasks, how to describe them, or how to create
shortcuts for them? In which case, they may have a stronger recognition of the
need for an iteration control structure and what would be needed to keep the
iteration from going on forever?
So, the point isn't that learning to program is inherently different. It's
different in the same ways as learning any domain is different from learning
other domains. By understanding more deeply the challenges of learning to
program, we can better help those students who do struggle and seem unable to
learn to program.
