Debugging Beyond the Code: Teachers' Perceptions of Debugging as a CT Practice Impacting Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning
Victoria Macann, Aman Kumar Yadav · 2023
Computational thinking (CT) is viewed as a support structure for educators to develop computational literacies [18][35]. The majority of research around CT practices has focused on decomposition, abstraction, and algorithmic thinking; however, there is little research on debugging and how teachers see the role of debugging in their instruction [4][17]. Given that debugging is viewed as a vital CT skill [38], there is a need to understand how elementary teachers perceive its role in supporting student learning. In this paper, we present results from a study that examined how elementary teachers understood debugging as well as how they saw the role of debugging to support student learning. Our findings indicate that most elementary teachers perceived debugging as a metacognitive support that allowed their students to shift how they approached problem-solving. Our findings also suggest that debugging may be a good starting point to allow elementary teachers to initially latch onto integrating CT. We discuss implications of our findings for integrating CT practices into classroom instruction.