Factors Effecting Information Technology Teacher Trainees' Programming Process

Abstract

The aim of this study is to determine the problems effecting programming process of preservice information technology teachers and the reasons of these problems by monitoring programming process. In this study, programming processes of pre-service teachers were investigated with cognitive task analysis. Six Information Technologies teacher candidates, taking Internet Based Programming course in Fall Semester of 2011-2012 academic year at the Department of Computer Education and Instructional Technologies (CEIT) at Hacettepe University, participated in the study. Participants were divided to three groups, namely advanced, intermediate and beginner according to their prior programming knowledge and experiences, Tasks of writing program and reading program were assigned to the participants. After the tasks of reading program and thinking and writing program simultaneously, interviews were made with retrospective thinking aloud procedure. The data was analyzed by the NVivo 8 package program. It was found that while
participants in advanced level were more successful in the task of writing program, participants in intermediate level were more successful in the task of reading program. The findings indicated that these two processes, writing program and reading program, may require different skills and cognitive processes.