The Effects of a Schema on Applied Programming Skills in an Introductory Class

抄録

In the study reported in this paper, we investigated the relationship between a schema and applied programming skills in computer programming education. A schema is a cognitive structure that is gained from experience, and it is assumed to affect an applied skill. The experiment in the present study comprised eight writing tasks and 45 reading tasks, and was designed to investigate three issues: (1) the details of a schema (i.e., knowledge related to program writing skills), (2) the relationship between a schema and applied skills, and (3) the differences between a schema and fragile knowledge. The results show that the group with high writing scores showed advanced applied skills, and there was certain common knowledge in the group with high writing scores that may reflect a programming schema. These results suggest that a teaching method designed to increase the experience of various programming codes through a large number of examples may be effective, with those codes slightly different from each other in order to create a programming schema.