Abstract-This paper critically examines current thinking about whether learning computer programming promotes the development of general higher mental functions. We show how the available evidence, and the underlying assumptions about the process of learning to program fail to address this issue adequately. Our analysis is based on a developmental cognitive science perspective on learning to program incorporating developmental and cognitive science considerations of the mental activities involved in programming. It highlights the importance for future research of investigating students' interactions with instructional and programming contexts, developmental transformation of their programming skills, and their background knowledge and reasoning abilities.
This article reports on a year-long study of high school students learning computer programming. The study examined three issues: 1) what is the impact of programming on particular mathematical and reasoning abilities?; 2) what cognitive skills or abilities best predict programming ability?; and 3) what do students actually understand about programming after two years of high school study? The results showed that even after two years of study, many students had only a rudimentary understanding of programming. Consequently, it was not surprising to also find that programming experience (as opposed to expertise) does not appear to transfer to other domains which share analogous formal properties. The article concludes that we need to more closely study the pedagogy of programming and how expertise can be better attained before we prematurely go looking for significant and wide reaching transfer effects from programming.
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