In this project, WestEd examines the ways in which middle-school students transfer knowledge of a first programming language to a second programming language. The research will generate a better understanding of the types of transfer (both positive and negative) that spontaneously occur across programming languages. The findings will contribute to the development of a domain-specific theory of transfer in computer science. In addition, the project team will generate a set of curricular scaffolds to support students’ transfer of knowledge between programming languages.
How can we help students from diverse backgrounds build on prior conceptual knowledge as they progress through a computer science course sequence that involves multiple programming languages?
Although many studies in computer science education examine how students perform when their coursework transitions from one programming language to another, the field still lacks a well-specified theory of how and when conceptual knowledge successfully transfers in the context of programming that can be used to inform teacher professional development and instructional design. The goals for this project are to
- conduct a longitudinal study of diverse middle school students as they progress through a three-language course sequence;
- develop a computer science–specific theory of transfer to describe how knowledge transfers from previously learned programming languages to new programming languages; and
- use the theory of transfer to develop and pilot-test an instructional module that facilitates students’ knowledge transfer from one programming language to another.
