Michael James Scott
Gheorghita Ghinea
ABSTRACT
Contemporary psychology has shown that self-theories can have a profound influence on affect and behavior. Entity-theorists, believing their traits are fixed, adopt maladaptive learning strategies in the face of difficulty. In contrast, incremental-theorists, believing their qualities can change, often adopt mastery-orientated strategies. However, can this concept be domain-specific? This poster presentation challenges the notion of a single dominant mindset. People can nurture a variety of beliefs about different traits, so in the minds of learners, programming aptitude may not be the same as intelligence. The results from a confirmatory factor analysis of 94 responses to an undergraduate programming experience survey indicate that beliefs towards aptitude are empirically distinct from those towards intelligence, suggesting that alternate self-traits should be considered when extending self-theories into specific domains.
- C. S. Dweck. Self-Theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development. Psychology Press, PA, USA, 2000.Google Scholar
- J. Hair, B. Black, B. Babin, and R. Anderson. Multivariate Data Analysis, Seventh Edition. Psychology Press, NJ, USA, 2010.Google Scholar
- M. J. Scott and G. Ghinea. Educating programmers: A reflection on barriers to deliberate practice. In Proceedings of the 2nd HEA Conference on Learning and Teaching in STEM Disciplines, (Birmingham, UK, Apr 17--19, 2013), page 028P.Google Scholar
Index Terms
- Implicit theories of programming aptitude as a barrier to learning to code: are they distinct from intelligence?
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