Analyzing Teachers’ Diagnostic and Intervention Processes in Debugging Using Video Vignettes

Providing individualized support to students during debugging is a huge challenge for teachers in K-12 computing education. In these everyday assessment situations, they often have little time to gather relevant information to diagnose the student’s problem and respond with an appropriate intervention. Thus, diagnostic and intervention processes in debugging are essential for teachers. Despite the importance, there is a lack of research on this topic and its possible implications for the classroom. Therefore, this paper aims to provide insights into teachers’ diagnostic and intervention processes in debugging. In this qualitative study, we investigate situation-specific aspects teachers consider for diagnosing error situations and interventions they apply in a specific debugging-related situation using video vignettes. To this end, scripted video vignettes depicting a typical classroom debugging situation were presented to experienced teachers, who reported their observations in open-ended questionnaires. The data were then analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The results show a wide range of different aspects used in diagnostic processes and in proposed interventions. Furthermore, our results indicate that teachers rarely address motivational and emotional aspects of debugging in their interventions. These findings contribute to a better understanding of teachers’ diagnostic and intervention processes and how they can be fostered in teacher education.