Computing-specific pedagogies and theoretical models: common uses and relationships

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how computing-specific pedagogies and theoretical models are interconnected in literature, highlighting their roles in advancing computing education through empirical and conceptual integration.

Contribution

It systematically categorizes the interactions between pedagogies and models in computing education, providing insights into their combined use and influence.

Findings

Pair programming and Parsons problems show the most interactions with theoretical models.

Explicit use of models and pedagogies can enhance computing education research.

The study offers a framework for understanding how theories support pedagogical practices.

Abstract

Computing education widely applies general learning theories and pedagogical practices. However, computing also includes specific disciplinary knowledge and skills, e.g., programming and software development methods, for which there has been a long history of development and application of specific pedagogical practices. In recent years, there has also been substantial interest in developing computing-specific theoretical models, which seek to describe and explain the complex interactions within teaching and learning computing in various contexts. In this paper, we explore connections between computing-specific pedagogies and theoretical models as reported in the literature. Our goal is to enrich computing education research and practice by illustrating how explicit use of field-specific theories and pedagogies can further the whole field. We have collected a list of computing-specific pedagogical practices and theoretical models from a literature search, identifying source papers where they have been first introduced or well described. We then searched for papers in the ACM digital library that cite source papers from each list, and analyzed the type of interaction between the model and pedagogy in each paper. We developed a categorization of how theoretical models and pedagogies have supported or discounted each other, have been used together in empirical studies or used to build new artefacts. Our results showed that pair programming and parsons problems have had the most interactions with theoretical models in the explored papers, and we present findings of the analysis of these interactions.