Constructing a core literature for computing education research

Abstract

After four decades of research on a broad range of topics, computing education has now emerged as a mature research community, with its own journals, conferences, and monographs. Despite this success, the computing education research community still lacks a commonly recognized core literature. A core literature can help a research community to develop a common orientation and make it easier for new researchers to enter the community. This paper proposes an approach to constructing and maintaining a core literature for computing education research. It includes a model for classifying research contributions and a methodology for determining whether they should be included in the core. The model and methodology have been applied to produce an initial list of core papers. An annotated list of these papers is given in appendix A.

Valuing computer science education research?

“…The work by Fincher & Petre [21], Pears et al, [41] and Seidman et al, [46] on discipline formation are good examples of CS Ed Research defining itself as a 'discipline', distinct from both the Education and CS disciplines, though cognate with CS and integral to quality CS education. Thus CS Ed Research can contribute to a vibrant teaching-research nexus in CS Education.…”

“…Therefore they are inherently not trans-disciplinary, and tend to be restrictive of the scholarship of integration. Fortunately for educators in the computing field, there is a developing sub-discipline of CS Ed research [21,41], which is congruent with many aspects of the practicing CS educator's computing discipline focus.…”

“…Evaluation of educational innovations is far from straightforward, and we need to exercise care both in design of our CS Ed research projects and in analysis and evaluation of the outcomes. Good recommendations for evaluation can be found in the following sources [3,7,21,27,41].…”

A survey of literature on the teaching of introductory programming

“…Additionally the papers were classified using a previously published taxonomy, and citation information collected using Google Scholar. A taxonomic breakdown of the papers finally selected is presented using a modified version of the Lisbon taxonomy [74] The annotated bibliography comprises 45 papers selected from the nominations. In selecting papers the following criteria were applied.…”

“…Limitations and areas of incomplete coverage of existing research efforts are also identified. The analysis applies publication and research quality metrics developed by a previous ITiCSE working group [74]. …”