This paper reports a study in which 11th grade students were observed, while engaged in several learning activities that address general aspects of recursion. One of these learning activities focused on the creation of recursive descriptions using natural language. The class discourse was recorded and analyzed, in order to locate patterns of students' expressions and ways of thinking. The present finding is two-fold. On the one hand, a class genre was created and used to refer to recursive phenomena and to describe them verbally. On the other hand, although they used a shared set of some agreedupon terms, the students tended to individually construct their unique recursive descriptions. These individual methods of assembly are labeled hereafter as "private syntax". It is concluded that learners' and educators' awareness of both the "building blocks" of any recursive description and the several possibilities for assembling these blocks, might help in the process of understanding recursion in general and in further construction of recursive functions in particular.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.