Leveraging the Potential of Abstraction in Programming Education

Abstract

Abstraction is a fundamental part of computer science, but it is also challenging, especially for novice learners. Part of this difficulty is that experts and teachers often unconsciously operate on several levels of abstraction at once, without being conscious of or explicit about this fact. This lightning talk suggests ways to overcome this potential disconnect between teachers and learners, and discusses the need for more research into the ways in which Python makes abstraction more visible and explicit to students.