Resumen de Debugging behaviors of early childhood teacher candidates with or without scaffolding

ChanMin Kim, Lucas Vasconcelos, Brian R. Belland, Duygu Umutlu, Cory Gleasman

• It is critical to teach all learners to program and think through programming. But to do so requires that early childhood teacher candidates learn to teach computer science. This in turn requires novel pedagogy that can both help such teachers learn the needed skills, but also provide a model for their future teaching. In this study, we examined how early childhood teacher candidates learned to program and debug blockbased code with and without scafolding. We aimed to see how approaches to debugging vary between early childhood teacher candidates who were provided debugging scafolds during block-based programming and those who were not. This qualitative case study focused on 13 undergraduates majoring in early childhood education.

  Data sources included video recording during debugging, semi-structured interviews, and (in the case of those who used scafolding) scafold responses. Research team members coded data independently and then came to consensus. With hypothesisdriven scafolds, participants persisted longer. Use of scafolds enabled the instructor to allow struggle without immediate help for participants. Collaborative reasoning was observed among the scafolded participants whereas the participants without scafolds often debugged alone. Regardless of scafolds, participants often engaged in embodied debugging and also used trial and error. This study provides evidence that one can fnd success debugging even when engaging in trial and error. This implies that attempting to prevent trial and error may be counterproductive in some contexts.

  Rather, computer science educators may be advised to promote productive struggle