Abstract:Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine how a middle school science teacher, new to programming, supports students in learning to debug physical computing systems consisting of programmable sensors and data displays.
Design/methodology/approach
This case study draws on data collected during an inquiry-oriented instructional unit in which students learn to collect, display and interpret data from their surrounding environment by wiring and programming a physical computing system. Using interaction ana… Show more
“…In subtle micro-level interactions with children, teachers model expected responses to mistakes and convey their values about student performance during instruction. When they prioritize process over product and attend to their students' emotional responses to errors, teachers help to support critical thinking and encourage learners to push through their frustrations (Hennessy Elliott et al, 2023).…”
Section: Responding To Mistakes During Learning and Teachingmentioning
This study explores the range of distinct mistake responses that one veteran public school teacher employs with her class of 20 Kindergarten students during daily learning and teaching. Relying on more than 60 h of classroom observations and using a grounded theory approach, a micro-level, qualitative analysis of the teacher’s responses to each child’s mistakes was conducted, attending to words and actions during instructional interactions captured in fieldnotes and video recordings. Data analysis of observed teaching practices revealed five distinct patterns that the teacher used to help children correct academic and/or behavioral mistakes. The amount and type of teacher involvement ranged from little engagement with mistakes for students who rarely made any, to heavy-handed supports for children who routinely struggled to obtain right answers.
“…In subtle micro-level interactions with children, teachers model expected responses to mistakes and convey their values about student performance during instruction. When they prioritize process over product and attend to their students' emotional responses to errors, teachers help to support critical thinking and encourage learners to push through their frustrations (Hennessy Elliott et al, 2023).…”
Section: Responding To Mistakes During Learning and Teachingmentioning
This study explores the range of distinct mistake responses that one veteran public school teacher employs with her class of 20 Kindergarten students during daily learning and teaching. Relying on more than 60 h of classroom observations and using a grounded theory approach, a micro-level, qualitative analysis of the teacher’s responses to each child’s mistakes was conducted, attending to words and actions during instructional interactions captured in fieldnotes and video recordings. Data analysis of observed teaching practices revealed five distinct patterns that the teacher used to help children correct academic and/or behavioral mistakes. The amount and type of teacher involvement ranged from little engagement with mistakes for students who rarely made any, to heavy-handed supports for children who routinely struggled to obtain right answers.
“…As Papert (1980) remarked, "errors benefit us because they lead us to study what happened, to understand what went wrong, and, through understanding, to fix it" (p. 114). However, debugging is also exacting and can be difficult for students to learn and challenging for teachers to teach (McCauley et al, 2008;Hennessy Elliott, 2023). For many students, encountering bugs can generate fear and anxiety that can lead to disengagement and the avoidance of computing (Scott & Ghinea, 2013;Coto et al, 2022).…”
Background and Context: While debugging is recognized as an essential practice, for many students, encountering bugs can generate emotional responses such as fear and anxiety that can lead to disengagement and the avoidance of computer programming. Growth mindsets can support perseverance and learning in these situations, yet few studies have investigated how growth mindsets emerge in practice amongst K-12 computing students facing physical computing debugging challenges. Objective: We seek to understand what (if any) growth mindset practices high school students exhibited when creating and exchanging buggy physical computing projects for their peers to solve during a Debugging by Design activity as part of their introductory computing course. Method: We focused on moment-to-moment microgenetic analysis of student interactions in designing and solving bugs for others to examine the practices students exhibited that demonstrated the development of a growth mindset and the contexts in which these practices emerged. Findings: We identified five emergent growth mindset practices: choosing challenges that lead to more learning, persisting after setbacks, giving and valuing praise for effort, approaching learning as constant improvement, and developing comfort with failure. Students most often exhibited these practices in peer-to-peer interactions and while making buggy physical computing projects for their peers to solve. Implications: Our analysis contributes to a more holistic understanding of students' social, emotional, and motivational approaches to debugging physical computing projects through the characterization of growth mindset practices. The presented inventory of growth mindset practices may be helpful to further study growth mindset in action in other computing settings.
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