Abstract:
The current debate about the teaching of data structures is
hampered because, as a community, we usually debate specifics
about data structure implementations and libraries, when the real
level of disagreement remains implicit - the intent behind our
teaching. This paper presents a phenomenographic study of the
intent of CS educators for teaching data structures in CS2. Based
on interviews with Computer Science educators and analysis of
CS literature, we identified five categories of intent: developing
transferable thinking, improving students' programming skills,
knowing "what's under the hood", knowledge of software
libraries, and component thinking. The CS community needs to
first debate at the level of these categories before moving to more
specific issues. This study also serves as an example of how
phenomenographic analysis can be used to inform debate on
syllabus design in general.
