article

Research perspectives on the objects-early debate

Authors:

Raymond Lister,

Anders Berglund,

Kathy Garvin-Doxas,

Andrew Luxton-Reilly,

Carsten Schulte,

Jacqueline L. WhalleyAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, Volume 38, Issue 4

Pages 146 - 165

https://doi.org/10.1145/1189136.1189183

Published: 26 June 2006 Publication History

Abstract

In March 2004, SIGCSE members contributed to a mailing list discussion on the question of whether programming should be taught objects first or imperative first. We analyse that discussion, exploring how the CS community debates the issue and whether contributors' positions are supported by the research literature on novice programmers. We applied four distinct research methods to the discussion: cognitive science, rhetorical analysis in the critical tradition, phenomenography and biography. We identify the cognitive claims made in the email discussion and find there is not a consensus in the research literature as to whether the objects first approach or the imperative approach is harder to learn. From the rhetorical analysis, we find that the discussion was not so much a debate between OO-first versus imperative-first, but instead was more for and against OO-first. Our phenomenographic analysis identified and categorized the underlying complexity of the discussion. We also applied a biographical method to explore the extent to which the participants' views are shaped by their own prior experience. The paper concludes with some reflections upon paradigms, and the manner in which the CS discipline community defines itself.

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Index Terms

Research perspectives on the objects-early debate
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education
        Information systems education
      2. Computing literacy

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGCSE Bulletin

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin Volume 38, Issue 4

December 2006

186 pages

ISSN:0097-8418

DOI:10.1145/1189136

Issue’s Table of Contents

ITiCSE-WGR '06: Working group reports on ITiCSE on Innovation and technology in computer science education
June 2006
99 pages
ISBN:1595936033
DOI:10.1145/1189215

Copyright © 2006 ACM.

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Published: 26 June 2006

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