Reflective Teaching of Logo

Abstract

A long-term instructional experiment assessed the cognitive consequences of reflective teaching practices, compared to inquiry teaching practices, on the acquisition and transfer of Logo computer programming for 2nd- and 5th-grade students. Inquiry teaching represented previous "best practices" in which teachers elicited predictions, asked leading questions, and assisted students when they encountered programming impasses. Reflective teaching modified inquiry teaching by explicit encouragement of a design stance where students assumed roles as potential designers of Logo as well as actual roles as the designers of their own programs for peer audiences. Other tools for reflection included writing summaries of their programming experiences, using programming templates, and working with "microworlds" that helped students objectify their experiences with Logo. Multiple levels (syntactic, semantic, schematic, strategic, and beliefs) of Logo knowledge were measured during and after instruction. Between-group differences over repeated measures consistently favored the group participating in reflective instruction. However, rather than simple differences on every measure, the pattern of mean differences over time was most consistent with Mayer's (1985) proposal of a chain of cognitive consequences regulating the acquisition of Logo. Moreover, participation in the reflective context facilitated general transfer of specific skills like debugging and summarization for both grades, but no differences in general transfer were observed between instructional conditions for skills not explicitly targeted for instruction. Children participating in the reflective context developed beliefs about programming practices that were tightly coupled with their performances. This tight coupling underscores the reciprocal relation between the social and the individual in the acquisition and transfer of cognitive skill.