skip to main content
10.1145/1067445.1067473acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesiticseConference Proceedingsconference-collections
Article

Novice Java programmers' conceptions of "object" and "class", and variation theory

Published: 27 June 2005 Publication History

Abstract

Problems with understanding concepts, so called misconceptions, have been investigated and reported in a number of studies regarding object-oriented programming [4], [3]. In a first programming course using an object-oriented language, it is of great importance that students get a good understanding of central concepts like object and class at an early stage of their education. We have, with a phenomenographic research approach, performed a study with first year university students, investigating what an understanding of the concepts object and class includes from a student perspective. By applying variation theory [8] to our results we are able to pin-point what the students need to be able to discern in order to gain a "rich" understanding of these concepts.

References

[1]
S. A. Booth. Learning to Program. A phenomenographic perspective. Number 89 in Güteborg Studies in Educational Science. Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, Göteborg, Sweden, 1992.
[2]
A. E. Fleury. Student conceptions of object-oriented programming in java. The Journal of Computing in Small Colleges, 15(1), November 1999.
[3]
A. E. Fleury. Programming in java: Student-constructed rules. In Proceedings of the thirty-first SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education, 2000.
[4]
S. Holland, R. Griffiths, and M. Woodman. Avoiding object misconceptions. In ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, Proceedings of the twenty-eighth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education, Volume 29 Issue 1, 1997.
[5]
C. A. Holmboe. Cognitive framework for knowledge in informatics: The case of object-orientation. In Proceedings of the 4th annual SIGCSE/SIGCUE ITiCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education, 1999.
[6]
M. Kölling. The problem of teaching object-oriented programming, part i: Languages. JOURNAL OF OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING, January 1999.
[7]
S. Kvale. InterViews: An introduction to qualitative research interviewing. Sage, 1996.
[8]
F. Marton and S. Booth. Learning and Awareness. Lawrence Erlbaum Ass., Mahwah, NJ, 1997.
[9]
B. Meyer. Object-oriented Software Construction. International series in Computer Science. Prentice Hall, 1988.
[10]
M. F. Pang. Two faces of variation: on continuity in the phenomenographic movement {1}. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 47(2), 2003.

Cited By

View all

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences
ITiCSE '05: Proceedings of the 10th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
June 2005
440 pages
ISBN:1595930248
DOI:10.1145/1067445
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 27 June 2005

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. conceptions
  2. misconceptions
  3. phenomenography
  4. variation theory

Qualifiers

  • Article

Conference

ITiCSE05
Sponsor:

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 552 of 1,613 submissions, 34%

Upcoming Conference

ITiCSE '25
Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education
June 27 - July 2, 2025
Nijmegen , Netherlands

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)49
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)5
Reflects downloads up to 22 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)To Be Or Not To Be . . . An Algorithm: The Notion According to Students and TeachersProceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3626252.3630950(102-108)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2024
  • (2023)Difficulties in Object-Oriented Design and its relationship with Abstraction: A Systematic Review of LiteratureProceedings of the 4th European Symposium on Software Engineering10.1145/3651640.3651643(1-13)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2023
  • (2023)SIDE-lib: A Library for Detecting Symptoms of Python Programming MisconceptionsProceedings of the 2023 Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3587102.3588838(159-165)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2023
  • (2023)Choosing a Didactic Basis for an Instructional Video: What Are the Implications For Novice Programmers?Proceedings of the 2023 Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3587102.3588795(450-456)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2023
  • (2023)Programming Is Hard - Or at Least It Used to BeProceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3545945.3569759(500-506)Online publication date: 2-Mar-2023
  • (2023)Analyse and Evaluate Quixbugs with Open AI Codex and Powering Next Generation Application2023 6th International Conference on Contemporary Computing and Informatics (IC3I)10.1109/IC3I59117.2023.10397753(165-170)Online publication date: 14-Sep-2023
  • (2022)Identifying Difficulties of Software Modeling Through Class Diagrams: A Long-Term Comparative AnalysisIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2022.315729010(28895-28910)Online publication date: 2022
  • (2021)How it Works: Algorithms - A Tool for Developing an Understanding of Control StructuresProceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 210.1145/3456565.3460032(621-622)Online publication date: 26-Jun-2021
  • (2021)A Curated Inventory of Programming Language MisconceptionsProceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3430665.3456343(380-386)Online publication date: 26-Jun-2021
  • (2020)Semantic Transfer in Programming Languages: Exploratory Study of Relative NovicesProceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education10.1145/3341525.3387406(307-313)Online publication date: 15-Jun-2020
  • Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media