Scaffolded autoethnography: a method for examining practice-to-research

Teachers often perceive educational research as confusing and can be disenfranchised by the research process. We propose scaffolded authethnography as a method to support principled examination of authentic practice. The approach is appealing because it is motivated by the teacher’s own day-to-day practice in a research context. Our demonstration of this method uses an analytical autoethnographic approach coupled with a data capture tool that documents the pedagogic content knowledge of a practicing teacher. We include a short case-study description where the method was used in the context of research in the area of threshold concept identification

Threshold concepts and teaching programming

This thesis argues that the urge to build and the adoption of a technocratic disposition have influenced and affected the pursuit and development of a deeper understanding of the discipline of computing and its pedagogy. It proposes the introduction to the discipline of the threshold concept construct to improve both the understanding and the pedagogy. The research examines the threshold concept construct using the theory of concepts. The examination establishes the conceptual coherence of the features attributed to threshold concepts and formalises the basis for threshold concept scholarship. It also provides a refutation for critiques of threshold concepts. The examination reveals the inextricable links between threshold concepts and pedagogic content knowledge. Both rely on the expertise of reflective pedagogues and are situated at the site of student learning difficulties and their encounters with troublesome knowledge. Both have deep understanding of discipline content knowledge at their centre. The two ideas are mutually supportive. A framework for identifying threshold concepts has been developed. The framework uses an elicitation instrument grounded in pedagogic content knowledge and an autoethnographic approach. The framework is used to identify state as a threshold concept in computing. The significant results of the research are two-fold. First, the identification of state as a threshold concept provides an insight into the disparate difficulties that have been persistently reported in the computer science education literature as stumbling blocks for novice programmers and enhances and develops the move towards discipline understanding and teaching for understanding. Second, the embryonic research area of threshold concept scholarship has been provided with a theoretical framework that can act as an organising principle to explicate existing research and provide a coherent focus for further research

The novice programmer's "device to think with"

We present some ideas for course material for the introductory teaching of programming that are based on the principle of allowing the students to be the domain experts. The idea is that the students. familiarity with the domain of discourse will make course material more motivating, and that it will be more likely that they will be able to model the concepts and artifacts being discussed. This approach thereby seeks to scaffold the students. understanding of programming-related concepts. For reasons discussed in the paper, we have chosen mobile phone technology for this discussion, but there is no reason why the same principles should not be applied to other culturally-accessible domains

Identifying Threshold Concepts: From Dead End to a New Direction

Since they were first described by Meyer and Land [1] the classification of concepts as 'threshold' concepts has engaged many researchers, including a number of CS researchers. A variety of approaches have been employed to identify concepts that could be classified as threshold concepts, with varying success. Our own frustrations in identifying them led us to identify shortcomings in commonly-used approaches, and to the promising possibilities offered by a new direction. We describe that new direction here, and detail the path that led us to it

A Study of Loop Style and Abstraction in Pedagogic Practice

This paper describes the results of a study into the use of structure and abstraction in the programming styles of lecturers and teaching assistants involved in teaching programming to students attending university and other third-level institutions. The study was motivated by the hypothesis that the trend towards object-orientation is being matched by pedagogic materials that consistently foster the deployment of abstraction and structure in the solution of programming problems. Unfortunately the evidence does not support the hypothesis. We conclude that the persistent use of abstraction at all levels of implementation is necessary to perfect expertise in its application and secure the benefits of the object-oriented paradigm