Title
Computing education theories: what are they and how are they used?
Abstract
In order to mature as a research field, computing education research (CER) seeks to build a better theoretical understanding of how students learn computing concepts and processes. Progress in this area depends on the development of computing-specific theories of learning to complement the general theoretical understanding of learning processes. In this paper we analyze the CER literature in three central publication venues -- ICER, ACM Transactions of Computing Education, and Computer Science Education -- over the period 2005--2015. Our findings identify new theoretical constructs of learning computing that have been published, and the research approaches that have been used in formulating these constructs. We identify 65 novel theoretical constructs in areas such as learning/understanding, learning behaviour/strategies, study choice/orientation, and performance/progression/retention. The most common research methods used to devise new constructs include grounded theory, phenomenography, and various statistical models. We further analyze how a number of these constructs, which arose in computing education, have been used in subsequent research, and present several examples to illustrate how theoretical constructs can guide and enrich further research. We discuss the implications for the whole field.
Year
DOI
Venue
2020
10.1145/3381889
Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research
Keywords
Field
DocType
computing education, method, research, theoretical construct, theory
Psychology,Education theory,Epistemology
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
11
1
2153-2184
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
978-1-4503-6185-9
0
0.34
References 
Authors
0
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Lauri Malmi11050142.12
Judy Sheard244460.95
Päivi Kinnunen325723.49
Simon432040.39
Jane Sinclair55312.82