Concrete examples of abstraction as manifested in students' transformative experiences
Jan Erik Moström, Jonas Boustedt, Anna Eckerdal, Robert McCartney, Kate Sanders, Lynda Thomas, Carol Zander · 2008
This paper examines transformational learning experiences of computing students as a way to better understand threshold concepts in computing. From empirical evidence we found that students often describe transformative experiences as learning situations in which they were led to use various kinds of abstraction, for example modularity, data abstraction, inheritance, polymorphism, reuse, design patterns, and complexity. Some students describe an abstract concept as coming first, and then needing to be made concrete though application; others describe transformations in which they learn the advantages of these abstract concepts from their experience of not using them.