[Edu-sig] a non-rhetorical question

[Andy Judkis]

>> Rather than catalog my frustrations, let me just pose a question to you 
>> all -- how much Python exposure do you think it should take before a 
>> student should be able to answer this question?  If a student can't even 
>> answer this, is it reasonable to say that they have learned any 
>> programming at all? (I know that they might have learned 
>> something -about- programming, but that is not the same thing.)
>
> No, if they cannot answer this then they have NOT learned any programming 
> at all.  It requires them to demonstrate the four very basic programming 
> concepts of input, output, conditional branching and operand comparison. 
> I would expect a student to grasp those in the first afternoon of the 
> course, or perhaps two afternoons.  I would not expect them to understand 
> formatted I/O or container types like lists/tuples or even modules, but 
> the act of writing a string, reading a string, comparing two strings and 
> printing a string, yes, they should have those down pat very quickly.
>
> So what were your frustrations?  I'm really curious.  I don't have the 
> opportunity to ever speak with a teacher of formal education, so I don't 
> know what their world is like.
>
> -Jeff

Jeff,

Your thoughts are very much like mine were -- the problem is so trivial and 
obvious that anyone who's spent a little time with the material should see 
the solution immediately.  But my experience shows that that's simply not 
true.  This stuff is just hard for most kids, even bright ones.

When I was in college in the late 70s, I worked as a research assistant at 
Pitt, working with people studying expert/novice differences in Physics 
problem solving. 
(http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/classics1993/A1993LZ47400001.pdf) 
The outcome of the study (which seemed pretty predictable to me) was that 
experts used concepts like momentum and energy to approach the problems, 
while novices used cues like "spring" and "inclined plane" to figure out 
what to do.  I think something similar happens with programming.  Most 
programming instruction that I've seen starts off by having the kids copy 
programs and make changes to them, and over time the ones that stick with it 
build up some conceptual understanding of what's going on.  It just seems to 
take longer than I would expect.

Thanks,

Andy