HCC Seminar Series: From interaction analysis to pedagogical imagining: Teachers and researchers' boundary crossing around open-ended debugging pathways

Abstract

In the first thread of this talk, I will share an overview of a discourse analysis method that has shaped my research on how teachers and students converse when teaching/learning computer programming. This research method, known as interaction analysis, is largely qualitative, inductive, and iterative, and focuses on detailed, multimodal transcripts of how people outwardly work together to understand one another and pull off teaching and learning. The second thread of the talk will apply this method in an empirical study in which we push back on a long-running assumption in the debugging education research literature that students are searching for “the” bug (singular) breaking their code. Instead, we assemble a novel debugging framework and document conversations in which teachers and students address open-ended debugging possibilities (e.g., attending to multiple ways to notice discrepancies, postulate causes, and try interventions), motivated by explicitly negotiated sociocomputational norms (e.g., having efficient code). In the third thread of the talk, I will transparently reflect on the limitations of these findings, and then share one way to address them. This resolution involves sharing qualitative findings directly with teachers to pursue boundary crossing – a process of blending research discoveries with teachers’ pedagogical imaginings.

Biography

David DeLiema’s research focuses on how students and teachers collaboratively navigate moments of getting stuck during computer science, mathematics, and science learning, and during everyday settings like playing puzzle games and exploring the outdoors. His research on “debugging failure” illustrates how collaboration, reflection, and storytelling are critical to learning. Through research-practice partnerships, his research examines cognitive and psychological processes within the context of social interaction, and often takes place within technology-rich settings.