Practical Thinking in Programming Education

Students are nowadays being introduced to the digital age as part of their formal education. This includes practical programming skills as well as more conceptual thinking tools developed in the discipline of computer science, sometimes denoted Computational Thinking (CT). The connection between CT and doing programming is sometimes thought of as the connection between theory and practice. The pragmatic thinker Dewey embraced practice in learning and argued that learning and knowing always come from experiencing the world. According to this view, there are no epistemological differences between theory and practice. In computer programming the student's active learning in the form of physical motor movement is important. Using the pragmatic way of analyzing learning to program puts a focus on the situated thinking during the practical programming, which relates to theories about CT. This research is focusing on the practical hands-on part of novice programming and in this aims at getting insights about factors important when learning to program that could inform teachers in the Computer Science classroom.