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Developing, Validating, and Implementing a Mental Model Test for Primary School Students (Doctoral Consortium)

Published: 06 February 2024 Publication History

Abstract

This doctoral research aims to address the lack of empirical studies on identifying mental models in primary school students, particularly in relation to programming concepts such as loops and conditionals. The objective is to develop and validate a mental model test and explore its potential in enhancing programming competence. The research will employ a mixed methods approach, utilizing an online questionnaire and interviews with primary school students attending computational thinking courses. The test will be validated by subject matter experts, and its correlation with other instruments will be assessed for criterion validation. Subsequently, the validated test will be implemented within a conceptual change teaching approach to evaluate its applicability and impact through a randomized controlled field trial.

References

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[1] Bower, M., & Falkner, K. (2015). Computational thinking, the notional machine, pre-service teachers, and research opportunities. Proceedings of the 17th Australasian Computing Education Conference (ACE 2015) 27, 30-39.
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[2] Dehnadi, S., Bornat, R., & Adams, R. (2009, June). Meta-analysis of the effect of consistency on success in early learning of programming. Psychology of Programming Interest Group (PPIG 2009), 21, 3-15.
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[3] Du Boulay, B. (1986). Some difficulties of learning to program. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 2(1), 57-73.
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[4] Gentner, D., & Stevens, A. L. (Eds.). (2014). Mental models. Psychology Press.
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[5] Götschi, T., Sanders, I., & Galpin, V. (2003). Mental models of recursion. Proceedings of the 34th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education 34,346-350.
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[6] Hartmann, M., Edelsbrunner, P., Hielscher, M., Paparo, G., Honegger, B. D., & Marinus, E. (2022). Programming concepts and misconceptions in grade 5 and 6 children: Developing and testing a new assessment tool. Atti del 5° Convegno sulle didattiche disciplinari, 5, 328-333.
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[7] Ma, L., Ferguson, J., Roper, M., & Wood, M. (2011). Investigating and improving the models of programming concepts held by novice programmers. Computer Science Education, 21(1), 57-80.
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[8] Mladenović, M., Boljat, I., & Žanko, Ž. (2018). Comparing loops misconceptions in block-based and text-based programming languages at the K-12 level. Education and Information Technologies, 23, 1483-1500.
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[9] Sorva, J., Karavirta, V., & Malmi, L. (2013). A review of generic program visualization systems for introductory programming education. ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE), 13(4), 1-64.

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  1. Developing, Validating, and Implementing a Mental Model Test for Primary School Students (Doctoral Consortium)

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        Koli Calling '23: Proceedings of the 23rd Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research
        November 2023
        361 pages
        ISBN:9798400716539
        DOI:10.1145/3631802
        Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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        Association for Computing Machinery

        New York, NY, United States

        Publication History

        Published: 06 February 2024

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        1. mental model
        2. mixed methods
        3. test instrument validation

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        • Extended-abstract
        • Research
        • Refereed limited

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        Koli Calling '23

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