Socratic-Dialectic Learning System of Recursion Programming

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to construct a recursion programming learning system based on Socratic dialogue. Since recursion programming learning relates to the formation and evolution of mental models, the learning may not be effective if teachers rely only on simply telling the students the standard solutions. Instead, teachers should urge the students to consider the mistakes and contradictions discovered by themselves in the learning process. Socratic dialogue is applied as a dialectic method, which presents questions to students and encourages them to reflect on their own thinking. In this study, we explored the fundamental Socratic dialogue reasoning principles and implemented these principles through production rules. This Socratic-dialectic learning system was implemented using database techniques and evaluated by an empirical study. According to the experimental results, the Socratic dialogue was proven to have positive impact on recursion programming learning.

A Survey on Teaching and Learning Recursive Programming

“…They set up experiments, record all interactions with software and video, then analyse the transcripts to pinpoint the misunderstandings, trace them back to plausible causes and try to capture the mental model at work (Anderson et al, 1984, Levy and Lapidot, 2000, Levy, 2001, Murnane and Warner, 2001, Levy and Lapidot, 2002. Furthermore, these verbal exchanges can be conducted not solely to infer a mental model of the student and reach a diagnostic and remedy, but even to become a maieutic process on its own right (Chang et al, 1999(Chang et al, , 2000.…”