Necesidad de elementos aisladores Alternativas conceptuales para el diseño

Unlike most if not all of her peers, Hannah came to the Computer Science (CS) project with a fairly well-developed understanding of what tools would be available to her, given her relative familiarity with the KeyLines software development kit (18.03.01 lns 21-27):

Hh: They gave us a brief overview of it all so I did work experience with Cambridge Intelligence and they’re helping out with this project so we’re basically helping them with their software, they’re giving us their SDK and we’re just looking at that developing JavaScript skills and basically just a programming sort of thing and then I I think I

vaguely remember it was yesterday afternoon then we are going off to do some sort of engineering thing and we’re uh working with the um Industrial Cadets Gold Award thing as well. Basically all I remember but it’s a really interesting, something I enjoy doing. Almost as soon as Hannah was asked about the project and what it entails, she volunteered that she had prior experience with the company and their product. She had attended a work

experience33 placement at Cambridge Intelligence earlier in the year, and it was one of the first times where Hannah had been offered any formal training in Computer Science, having until this year been primarily self-taught (18.03.01 lns 118-130):

Hh: Well I did it for work experience uh I have done programming in the past umm in my spare time when I was at secondary school umm I didn’t have the opportunity to do Computer Science um cause we didn’t have the teachers available for it so I kind of ish taught myself the course but only the programming side of it all and I kind of made the beginning to a game

R: Okay

33 _{In the United Kingdom, it is typical for sixth form students to complete a placement of approximately one week}

with an employer in a field that interests them. Hannah’s had been earlier in the year at Cambridge Intelligence, the company that produces the KeyLines software

Hh: But I used that for cause I did Duke of Edinburgh Bronze and this thing called Arts Award so I developed that game to use for those awards and that’s kind of where I realised I really liked programming. I developed my skills there um but with JavaScript, I first started using that whenever we did work experience this year (last year maybe?) I think but yeah basically I went to there and I knew I had to do programming but I didn’t know what language it was in so in the interview he said JavaScript so I had to a week before work experience kind of put some side time aside and try to teach myself some JavaScript but now with the new Challenge I’ll have a chance to develop it further which will be good

Hannah and I were in general agreement that this work experience, and her ability to self-teach, would hold her in good stead for this Challenge. Where previously she had been able to teach herself only what interested her, this project would require Hannah to develop skills based on what was necessary to complete the project. Hannah accepted that this would be less open-ended than her independent work, but as seen above viewed the project as an opportunity to further develop her skills in this new programming language.

Hannah’s self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977) at this early stage in the project is quite positive, based not only on her previous experience but on the feedback she has received from others, most notably her Computer Science instructor (18.03.01 lns 133-144, emphasis added):

Hh: Umm well it depends because some people only know two languages the ones we’ve learnt in class which is Visual Basic and C# um whereas now I know 4, I know Python, Visual Basic, C#, and a bit of JavaScript so I feel like if you didn’t do Computer Science in secondary school obviously I didn’t so I had a disadvantage when I first joined

however because of work experience and things I’ve done outside of school I now have more of an advantage because I know more languages than everybody else so that’s been quite useful now in the Challenge [Instructor] wants me to help people try to work

their JavaScript

R: That’s great! Do you think that’s something you’re going to enjoy doing? Like do you enjoy taking on that almost tutorial role or

Hh: Yeah I kind of like taking the leadership role telling people what to do umm but no yeah I’m really … I’m not that great at clearly telling people what to do but I do like telling them so hopefully they’ll understand yeah

Lin (2016) found that social persuasion, which includes communication, feedback,

encouragement, and others’ expectations, is a main predictor of students’ programming self- efficacy, and so it is likely that the positive feedback Hannah received from her instructor impacted her beliefs regarding her programming competence. At this point in time, Hannah had not been offered the project brief and so was unaware of the specifics of the task ahead. She felt, however, that having been called upon by her instructor to act as an expert in the programming language of the project, she would be able to take on a leadership role in the weeks ahead. It is also clear that she relished the thought of being the expert, and in particular the thought of being able to set tasks for her peers.

Hannah doesn’t just place importance on programming for the sake of producing workable code; she also believes that the logic necessary for coding is important in daily life as well (18.03.09 lns 83-89):

R: So you’d advocate students growing up from here out learning to code um learning to program?

Hh: Yeah even if you don’t do anything like even if you don’t do Physics and Maths or Chemistry or whatever you do English and History programming teaches you to think in that way that can be useful for everyday life solving problems so I think even if you just learn Python literally the most basic programming language it’s you can learn it in a week to be fair um and then you start thinking in a different way and it can really help people

The premium that Hannah places on the sort of logic that develops from programming indicates that she views this project not only as a way to develop her JavaScript proficiency or to gain a recognisable qualification but as a vehicle to help shift the ways she and her peers think. Other exchanges make clear that she believes this thinking is transferrable to other areas as well. Interestingly, it is quite clear that Hannah believes this useful logic of programming is not limited

to logic from programming, as is made clear when groups are formed and Hannah is evaluating her team members (18.03.20 lns 41-45):

Hh:…Matthew can program as well he can get a grasp of it much quicker than Jane um so he’ll probably end up helping me out and then once Jane kind of understands the logic cause she does maths as well so she’ll find the logic of programming quite easy um it’s just knowing the syntax which she can then just ask me for so we’ll probably all end up doing bits and bobs but mainly something like that.

Here, Hannah reasserts herself as a group leader, referring to Matthew’s contribution as “helping her out”. She also suggests he will “get a grasp of” KeyLines much more quickly than their third team member (and, [unbeknown to Hannah,] fellow research participant) Jane. However,

Hannah believed that because Jane does A Level Maths, she would be able to understand the logic of programming quite quickly. This suggests that she does not view this logic as

something innate, or exclusive to Computer Science. It also suggests that, in the earliest stages of the project, Hannah believed that eventually all members of her team would contribute to the coding as well as other associated tasks.

5.6. Hannah as a self-directed learner