Teaching secondary school students a reflective approach to debugging
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University of Cambridge
Department of Computer Science and Technology
Department of Computer Science and Technology
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The process of debugging, or finding and fixing errors in computer programs, is an integral part of the programming experience. For the millions of secondary school students learning to program across the world, debugging is a frequent source of struggle and emotional distress, especially in text-based programming languages. Research that investigates how to teach debugging to secondary school students is paramount for improving these experiences, but is severely lacking.
This dissertation investigates how the teaching and learning of debugging can be improved for secondary school students learning a text-based programming language. Analyses of students' and teachers' classroom experiences highlighted a lack of reflection in many students' debugging behaviour, as well as a common dependence on the teacher for debugging support. This is problematic in the classroom, as students are more likely to be stuck than enjoy personal success when attempting to fix errors independently. The results from this work informed the development of an approach for teaching the debugging process to secondary school students, titled \textit{PRIMMDebug}. The main goal of PRIMMDebug is to encourage students to adopt a reflective and systematic approach to debugging. An initial classroom study shows a discrepancy between students' perspectives, who did not engage with nor appreciate several of the key features of the tool, and teachers' perspectives, who appreciated the emphasis placed by PRIMMDebug on reflection and systematicity.
The main contributions of this dissertation can be used both in the classroom and by computing education researchers seeking to improve the teaching and learning of debugging. In a context where students across the world are now learning to program, this work has the potential to significantly improve young people's experiences with debugging.