Teaching computer programming in schools
Teaching computer programming in schools
I reproduce few lines from the book “ Studying the Novice Programmer” edited by Elliot Soloway and James C. Sphohrer, published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, publishers.
“Why should programming be taught in schools? The two most commonly heard answers to this question are: (1) computers are the future, so students should become familiar with them to enhance their job skills and to make them informed citizens in a technological society, and 2) learning to p;rogram is a cognitively demanding activity that can open the door to new ways of exploring powerful ideas and thereby help students develop “good habits of mind” that will make them more creative and effective problem solvers. This second answer to the question of why programming should be taught in the schools deals with the problem of transfer: how to make knowledge and skills learned in one context available in unforeseeable ways in some other context”.
Any body has the experience of the second answer in teaching computer programming?
I reproduce few lines from the book “ Studying the Novice Programmer” edited by Elliot Soloway and James C. Sphohrer, published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, publishers.
“Why should programming be taught in schools? The two most commonly heard answers to this question are: (1) computers are the future, so students should become familiar with them to enhance their job skills and to make them informed citizens in a technological society, and 2) learning to p;rogram is a cognitively demanding activity that can open the door to new ways of exploring powerful ideas and thereby help students develop “good habits of mind” that will make them more creative and effective problem solvers. This second answer to the question of why programming should be taught in the schools deals with the problem of transfer: how to make knowledge and skills learned in one context available in unforeseeable ways in some other context”.
Any body has the experience of the second answer in teaching computer programming?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Sylvia Martinez on
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I think both of these answers are weak, and I'm wondering if you went further into this paper there might be more there.
Teaching programming is much more relevant than hoping that it will be used someday, or hoping skills will transfer. Programming is one of the only way to learn hands-on important concepts like troubleshooting, feedback, systems thinking and more, all in context.
Here's an interesting article you might like: http://www.stager.org/articles/thecaseforcomputing.html
Giving children the control over the most powerful machine in the world is something important. It allows the child to be at the center of their own learning, communicating in a language that is about logic and math. Computer programming is as powerful a communication tool as learning to read or write, and it's a shame we deprive ALL children of the experience.
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Permalink Reply by M. SESHAGIRI on
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Sylvia, thanks for the message. I strongly agree with you regarding programming as powerful communication tool as learning to read or write. Further, I would like to add that to the commonly popular 3Rs - read, write, arithmetic, one more r should be added that is "programming" , resulting to 4Rs.
But, I would like to know any educator have experience of teaching programming to students and have found some positive change in the thinking skills of students.
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Take a look at the work of Yasmin Kafai and Idit Harel. Both researchers in this area.
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Permalink Reply by Joaquim Lopes on
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I don't think that programming should join reading, writing and arithmetic as one of the most important things in education. Mind you, I have nothing against programming (I know how to program in about half a dozen languages and understant at least as many more), just don't think this is a priority.
I don't have any experience in teaching programming to my students (aged 9-12) but I have some experience teaching to adults.
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Permalink Reply by Torsten Otto on
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I don't think the issue is that programming is the wrong focus - it is a "hard" way towards a degree. You don't get away with small mistakes here and there, you really have to sit down, think and think hard, and work it out.
The same happens in Germany, the numbers decline despite a big demand.
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The purposes of learning computers may be divided into three categories: 1) Learning computers for business, education, office work, etc. (learning programming is not necessary); 2) Learning computers to have a career as software developer (learning programming is essential) and 3) Learning computer programming to improve thinking skills (similar to learning chess game, abacus, strategic games).
Third category, learning computer programming to improve thinking skills, is not abstract thinking. If we read the book “Studying Novice Programmer” and several articles available on Net, we can find thoughts expressed by eminent cognitive researchers / educators including Seymour Papert (designed LOGO programming language), Elliot Soloway, Richard E. Mayer, who worked for a long time towards finding positive impact of learning programming on children .
The contribution of Americans is great in this regard. Certainly, the research towards making humans more intelligent is greater than making machines intelligent (robotics). I personally feel indebted to all people like Seymour Papert, his followers, Richard E. Mayer and others for their great work and wealth of research material which is unfortunately, now buried in copyrighted books or ACM libraries.
Why the Information Science Departments are not able to attract students to join computer science courses, in spite of great demand for computer jobs, need to be examined seriously. The philosophy of computer programming as an aid to improve thinking skills may need to be popularized to attract students, parents & teachers towards computer programming.
I wonder where the chain is missing, after the research by Richard E. Mayer and others regarding “Learning to program and learning to think: what’s the connection?” (article published in the year 1986). For the benefit of interested readers URL of the article is given here: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=6138.6142&coll=GUIDE&...
Does anybody know the track of research on this subject after 1986?
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I believe that you are asking the wrong question. You may develop skills while teaching anything. In fact it doesn't matter if it is mechanics, nutrition, history, cooking or writing. If you use the right methods then you can develop thinking skills and transfer. So the question here should not be "Can we improve thinking skills through computer programming?" but "How can we improve thinking skills hrough computer programming?".
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Very good suggestion.
Now our question can be re-drafted to "How can we improve thinking skills through computer programming"
Further, I would like also to add that "Whether the thinking skills learnt during the course of learning programming will relate to only programming or the thinking skills thus learnt can stimulate the grey cells and
improve the general intellectual capacity of children?"
I once again thank Sylvia Martinez for her reference to Stager's article.
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You ask whether the thinking skills learned during the course of learning programming will relate only to programming or does it improve general thinking skills and stimulate the brain. I am not an expert on cognitive psychology but I think that any skills development will stimulate the brain (the little gray cells that Poirot likes to mention). As for the development of general thinking skills it depends on the focus of the course, the methods used and what you want from the course. If you only teach the structure of the language (the same as the grammar in language teaching) those skills will only relate to the programming language itself. If, on the other hand, you teach a programming language as a tool to solve problems (that's what Papert talks about) then the skills will be transferable and surely will improve the children's expertise in other areas.
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Thanks for the feedback. It is about teaching programming language as a tool to solve problems (the Papert's way) that I am referring.
In the article by Gory Stagger referred by Sylvia Martinez, very good information was provided about the experiences of Gory Stagger and Seymour Papert while creating learning environment for severely at-risk students at the Constructionist Learning Laboratory (CCL), inside the Maine Youth Center, the state facility for adjudicated teens.
I am looking for similar experiments or success stories at different parts of the world. There may be many success stories relating to use of computers to help students to improve their knowledge & thinking skills; but I would like to have success stories, particularly, those relating to teaching programming to help students to improve their general thinking skills.
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Why no reply from anybody ?
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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on
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I've taught gifted kiddos for 22+ years and over the years I've had students who wanted to learn programming. The only resources I had at the time were Q Basic and HTML (is that programming?) I also so have access to something called Liberty Basic. Not to be mundane in this very philosophical discussion; but I have a comment and a question.
COMMENT: Students did it because they liked it and thought it was "fun"--is that a good enough reason ? That question wasn't my question.
QUESTION: If I have students in my current and future classes that want to learn computer programming--what resources do I give them, what "language" do they learn? Do you have any book/manual titles that would be good for 11-12 year olds? Now, there is my question, OK two questions. Thanks N.
PS--as you can see by my post, I don't have a clue about programming but luckily I don't have to.
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