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Introducing Computer Science to High School Students Through Logic Programming

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2018

TIMOTHY T. YUEN ,
MARITZA REYES  and
YUANLIN ZHANG
TIMOTHY T. YUEN
Affiliation:
University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA (e-mail: timothy.yuen@utsa.edu)
MARITZA REYES
Affiliation:
University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA (e-mail: maritza reyes@utexas.edu)
YUANLIN ZHANG
Affiliation:
Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA (e-mail: y.zhang@ttu.edu)
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Abstract

This paper investigates how high school students in an introductory computer science (CS) course approach computing in the logic programming (LP) paradigm. This qualitative study shows how novice students operate within the LP paradigm while engaging in foundational computing concepts and skills: students are engaged in a cyclical process of abstraction, reasoning, and creating representations of their ideas in code while also being informed by the (procedural) requirements and the revision/debugging process. As these computing concepts and skills are also expected in traditional approaches to introductory K-12 CS courses, this paper asserts that LP is a viable paradigm choice for high school novices.

Keywords

CS educationhigh school CSdeclarative programminglogic programminganswer set programming
Type
Original Article
Information
Theory and Practice of Logic Programming , Volume 19 , Special Issue 2: User-Oriented Logic Programming and Reasoning Paradigms , March 2019 , pp. 204 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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Footnotes

The authors thank Cynthia Perez, Rocky Upchurch, and Edward Wertz for their contributions to this project, and thank Michael Gelfond for valuable discussions and sharing his teaching materials. This work is partially supported by NSF grant CNS-1359359. We thank the anonymous reviewers whose feedback helps to improve the quality of this paper.

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