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Hmm. I think I have a similar story. I was a competitive ballroom dancer, and at one point, a fellow dancer was trying to teach me to have better frame. (Frame

Hmm. I think I have a similar story. I was a competitive ballroom dancer, and at one point, a fellow dancer was trying to teach me to have better frame. (Frame is some mix of good posture, being rigid but not stiff; the follower in a ballroom dance uses it to know where to go, and to know what the leader of the dance wants to do. Of course.) I don't think I really got it until at some point he led me (to demonstrate his frame, and how it should feel) and that was what really made it click for me. In an instant I was a better dancer, but I don't think words alone would have gotten us there. Imitating him made me better. (And he had to show me how to lead by making me follow him, and I definitely still have no real idea how to follow, so it was doubly impressive that he got the point across.) And frame in general is one of those things that when instructors teach, is taught not only through verbal description, but through actual interaction with a person body. (E.g., we pair dancers off, and have them "move" each other using their frame.) And I don't think it could be adequately conveyed with only words, or, it's definitely much easier to demonstrate by physical contact. (And it's one of those things that instructors will critique from the very beginning until … well, if there is a point where one's frame is perfect, I've not hit it.) The article also reminds me of when I was a TA for Computer Science. Some students need help, in the sense that they need some concept explained better, or they don't know what function or type to apply or don't know a particular data structure. But some students need help, in that they seem to lack something extremely fundamental; the closest I've come to it is that they lack the ability to establish a mental model of a program and how a computer might execute it that is coherent and consistent. (That is, they'll have some rules, but they're more like patches and bits of understanding and are sometimes even self-contradictory, because they the student are closer to grasping at straws than having some idea of what is actually going on.) Getting the student past that hurdle is something I struggled with as a TA. (I myself either picked it up so long ago I take it for granted, or it came naturally. But neither does any good when trying to teach it.) I feel like at some point I read a research paper that seemed to establish that this divide between CS students was the lack of a good coherent mental model, but I've since lost any reference to it.

Izkata 6y ago
You're referring to this: https://blog.codinghorror.com/separating-programming-sheep-from-non-programming-goats/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/separating-programming-sheep-f... I was also a TA for CS, for three years, and when you're in that situation and encounter so many students in such rapid succession, the existence of a double-hump becomes really obvious. It's just that because these courses are self-selected, the second hump has a small number of people. Reading through the linked retraction at the top, it appears it was only retracted for the controversy and claims outside the original findings, not because what it found was false. So it's really frustrating that people use this as a claim there's no such thing. I can definitely imagine the cause being something like tacit knowledge that we just don't know how to teach, though.
- deathanatos 6y ago
  I think you might be right, and interesting, I did not know it had been retracted. Is the retraction trying to retract some claim that people who lack a consistent model are incapable of programming, or something more? (As my original read of the paper was more that the lack of a consistent model was the cause behind poor performance, but not an unsolvable problem, and more of a great hint as to how we could or should approach teaching CS. However, while TA'ing, I did occasionally notice such a behavior, and tried to point it out to the student, and that in and of itself turns out to be harder and trickier than one thinks to communicate, like trying to describe the color blue to someone who hasn't seen it. And, of course, TA'ing is hemmed in by the real-world constraints of too many students, too little time. > It's just that because these courses are self-selected, the second hump has a small number of people. By second hump, you mean the weaker group (the "inconsistent" group, from the papaer)? At my college, the early CS classes — which was where I spent most of my time as a TA — were also taken by some students of non-CS majors, as some majors required two semesters of CS. (These were primarily major whereby one might need to say, write a computer model to help validate/invalidate something more related to one's field.) So, they weren't all their completely voluntarily, I suppose? But we definitely had some self-selected students, those who had clearly been self-teaching themselves computers and programming from early in their teenage years. However, our college also permitted one to voluntarily skip one or both of the first two semesters, if one felt one was strong enough to do so. (There was a grace period at the start of the semester whereby you could still transition between the classes, if you found you had bit off more than you could chew.) So, those clearly strong students who had already been independently studying in the field prior to university could skip over some of the courses.

Izkata 6y ago

You're referring to this: https://blog.codinghorror.com/separating-programming-sheep-from-non-programming-goats/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/separating-programming-sheep-f... I was also a TA for CS, for three years, and when you're in that situation and encounter so many students in such rapid succession, the existence of a double-hump becomes really obvious. It's just that because these courses are self-selected, the second hump has a small number of people. Reading through the linked retraction at the top, it appears it was only retracted for the controversy and claims outside the original findings, not because what it found was false. So it's really frustrating that people use this as a claim there's no such thing. I can definitely imagine the cause being something like tacit knowledge that we just don't know how to teach, though.

deathanatos 6y ago
I think you might be right, and interesting, I did not know it had been retracted. Is the retraction trying to retract some claim that people who lack a consistent model are incapable of programming, or something more? (As my original read of the paper was more that the lack of a consistent model was the cause behind poor performance, but not an unsolvable problem, and more of a great hint as to how we could or should approach teaching CS. However, while TA'ing, I did occasionally notice such a behavior, and tried to point it out to the student, and that in and of itself turns out to be harder and trickier than one thinks to communicate, like trying to describe the color blue to someone who hasn't seen it. And, of course, TA'ing is hemmed in by the real-world constraints of too many students, too little time. > It's just that because these courses are self-selected, the second hump has a small number of people. By second hump, you mean the weaker group (the "inconsistent" group, from the papaer)? At my college, the early CS classes — which was where I spent most of my time as a TA — were also taken by some students of non-CS majors, as some majors required two semesters of CS. (These were primarily major whereby one might need to say, write a computer model to help validate/invalidate something more related to one's field.) So, they weren't all their completely voluntarily, I suppose? But we definitely had some self-selected students, those who had clearly been self-teaching themselves computers and programming from early in their teenage years. However, our college also permitted one to voluntarily skip one or both of the first two semesters, if one felt one was strong enough to do so. (There was a grace period at the start of the semester whereby you could still transition between the classes, if you found you had bit off more than you could chew.) So, those clearly strong students who had already been independently studying in the field prior to university could skip over some of the courses.