In recent years, schools (as well as universities) have added cyber security to their computer science curricula. This topic is still new for most of the current teachers, who would normally have a standard computer science background. Therefore the teachers are trained and then teaching their students what they have just learned. In order to…

Aim/Purpose: Research shows that students encounter difficulties in identifying the structure of argumentation texts and in understanding the main message of the argument. The research examined the effect that learning Logic Programming (LP), while applying logic inference, has on students' understanding of argumentation texts. Background:…

Functions are all around us, disguised as actions on concrete objects. Composition of functions, too, is all around us, because these actions can be performed in succession, the output of one serving as the input for the next. In terms of Gray and Tall's (2001) "embodied objects" or Lakoff and Nunez's (2000) "mathematical idea…

This study aimed at exploring how high school students deal with designing an information system, for example, for a small business or a medical clinic, the extent to which students develop as independent learners while working on their projects, and the factors that help or hinder fostering students' design skills. The three-phase dual-loop…

We studied students' conceptions of correctness and their influence on students' correctness-related practices by examining how 159 students had analyzed the correctness of error-free and erroneous algorithms and by interviewing seven students regarding their work. We found that students conceptualized program correctness as the sum of the…

An approach to the teaching and learning of high school computer science (CS) to and by educationally disadvantaged students (EDS) is described, as well as the implementation of six pedagogical principles in two learning environments developed for Israeli schools. Following a brief description of the main characteristics of EDS classes and a…

Recursion is a central concept in computer science, yet it is difficult for beginners to comprehend. Israeli high-school students learn recursion in the framework of a special modular program in computer science (Gal-Ezer & Harel, 1999). Some of them are introduced to the concept of recursion in two different paradigms: the procedural…

This article describes research on the learning of object-oriented programming (OOP) by novices. During two academic years, we taught OOP to high school students, using Java and BlueJ. Our approach to teaching featured: objects-first, teaching composed classes relatively early, deferring the teaching of main methods, and focusing on class…

The IADIS CELDA 2012 Conference intention was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There had been advances in both cognitive psychology and computing that have affected the educational arena. The convergence of these two disciplines is increasing at a…