Title
Theoretical underpinnings of computing education research: what is the evidence?
Abstract
We analyze the Computing Education Research (CER) literature to discover what theories, conceptual models and frameworks recent CER builds on. This gives rise to a broad understanding of the theoretical basis of CER that is useful for researchers working in that area, and has the potential to help CER develop its own identity as an independent field of study. Our analysis takes in seven years of publications (2005-2011, 308 papers) in three venues that publish long research papers in computing education: the journals ACM Transactions of Computing Education (TOCE) and Computer Science Education (CSEd), and the conference International Computing Education Research Workshop (ICER). We looked at the theoretical background works that are used or extended in the papers, not just referred to when describing related work. These background works include theories, conceptual models and frameworks. For each background work we tried to identify the discipline from which it originates, to gain an understanding of how CER relates to its neighboring fields. We also identified theoretical works originating within CER itself, showing that the field is building on its own theoretical works. Our main findings are that there is a great richness of work on which recent CER papers build; there are no prevailing theoretical or technical works that are broadly applied across CER; about half the analyzed papers build on no previous theoretical work, but a considerable share of these are building their own theoretical constructions. We discuss the significance of these findings for the whole field and conclude with some recommendations.
Year
DOI
Venue
2014
10.1145/2632320.2632358
ICER
Keywords
Field
DocType
classifying publications,computer science education,computing education,research methods
Publication,Social science,Data science,Conceptual model,Sociology,Knowledge management
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
19
1.41
17
Authors
10
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Lauri Malmi11050142.12
Judy Sheard244460.95
Simon332040.39
Roman Bednarik456148.77
Juha Helminen51078.98
Paivi Kinnunen6504.10
Ari Korhonen780667.48
Niko Myller829624.67
Juha Sorva930624.67
Ahmad Taherkhani10625.92