Research in Computer Science Education - Guide to Teaching Computer Science: An Activity-Based Approach - page 55

decisions. When reading and discussing computer science education research works
in the MTCS course, focus should be placed both on the research itself (i.e., the
research field, subject, questions, methods, and results) as well as on the research
conclusions and recommendations. The discussions should highlight the fact that
the prospective teachers can use these conclusions in their future work. In the con-
tinuation of the chapter, we first present a brief background of computer science
education research, together with its applications in computer science learning and
teaching processes. Second, we present several activities to be facilitated in the
MTCS course, which introduce to the prospective computer science teachers the
research in computer science education as well as its relevance for computer sci-
ence teaching. In Chap. 6, we further expand the discussion on one central research
topic in computer science education, i.e., learners' conceptions of computer science
concepts, which deserve special attention due to its importance for computer sci-
ence teaching and learning processes in general and in the high school in particular.

4.2 Research in Computer Science Education:

What is it and Why and How is it Useful?

This section delves into the details of research on computer science education, ad-
dressing the following topics: categories of computer science education research,
computer science education research on learning and teaching processes, and re-
sources for computer science education research.

4.2.1 Computer Science Education Research Categories

Research in computer science education includes a variety of topics, which reflect
a wide spectrum of interest. The focus of these topics has been changed over the
years due to changes introduced in the discipline, the curriculum, programming
languages, programming paradigms, computerized teaching tools, etc. Ragonis and
Hazzan ( 2015 , in review) explore the content and changes that took place in the
last decade within the ITiCSE conference—one of the central venues for computer
science education research. In what follows, we present several topics included in
computer science education research together with illustrative research works as-
sociated with these topics:

• Novice knowledge. For example, Garner et al. ( 2005 ) investigate problems en-
countered by novice programmers; de Raadt ( 2007 ) reviews several recent stud-
ies which explored difficulties encountered by novices while learning program-
ming and problem solving; Watson et al. ( 2014 ) have researched over the past
50 years predictors of programming performance. They found that a student's
programming behavior is one of the strongest indicators of their performance,
and suggest that research should be continued in that direction.
• Concept understanding, e.g., variables, recursion, inheritance. For example,