Research in Computer Science Education - Guide to Teaching Computer Science: An Activity-Based Approach - page 66

• Stage D: The meaning of learners' mistakes, class discussion
After the students finish working in pairs, it is recommended to facilitate a
class discussion to help them assimilate the process they went through. The
discussion can address the following issues:
− Mistakes that have been discovered by the students, focusing on possible
misconceptions that could lead to these mistakes.
− Differences between tasks that ask to “find an incorrect solution” and tasks
that ask to “explore why a mistake occurred.”
− The importance of this kind of investigation for (prospective) computer
science teachers. For example, such an investigation can help teachers in
lesson preparation and can direct them to change the teaching order of dif-
ferent topics, to use different teaching materials, and to use animation or
other demonstration tools.
• Stage E: Taking the researcher's perspective, work in pairs
This stage is optional and can be facilitated by the instructors of the MTCS
course who choose to deepen the discussion on research tools.
The prospective computer science teachers are asked to use the drafts of
their own solution developed in Stage A, and by adopting a researcher's per-
spective, to discuss in pairs what, in their opinion, can be learnt from this
examination. For example, the collection of intermediate drafts of a solution
can help a researcher in investigating learners' mental processes, examining
different directions a learner chose, guessing what caused a learner to change
directions during the development process, etc.
• Stage F: Reflection, individual work
The students are asked to reflect on the activity. The reflection can be either
an open and spontaneous reflection or a guided reflection as presented in
Table 4.4 . The selection of the kind of the reflection partially depends on stu-
dents' previous awareness to reflection (see Sect. 5.6). Additional reflection
questions can address the kind of activity itself, e.g., how were you contrib-
uted from the discussion in pairs? What was the most difficult stage in this
activity and why, etc.
Activity Summary:
As mentioned before, the target of this activity is to expose the prospective
computer science teachers to a new perspective—the researcher's point of
view—by offering them to consider different approaches when learners' mis-
takes are examined. This exposure is expected to broaden their considerations
as computer science teachers, mainly when they design teaching materials.
Specifically, they are expected to take the learners' perspective, to consider
what they understand, what might mislead their understanding, and which
learning tools can help novice learners acquire new knowledge.
In addition to the pedagogical contribution of this activity, it also con-
tributes to the prospective computer science teachers' PCK since they are
exposed to different mistakes computer science learners may encounter in the
context of arrays and logical conditions.