Towards a Theory-Based Approach for Analyzing Students' Debugging Processes

Abstract

Debugging is an immense challenge for novices when learning programming, often causing frustration. Applying a systematic debugging process has a considerable impact on debugging success. As a result, several interventions have been designed to teach this process to students. However, understanding how students actually apply these processes remains limited, as existing analysis approaches only partially capture students’ debugging processes. To address this gap, this paper proposes a process-oriented and programming language-independent analysis approach grounded in an ideal-typical debugging process model to reconstruct and analyze debugging processes. This approach provides a foundation for process-level insights into how students identify and solve bugs. We illustrate the applicability of the approach through a case study analyzing four screen recordings of secondary school students debugging Scratch programs. First insights demonstrate how the approach enables a detailed reconstruction of debugging processes and the identification of deviations from an ideal-typical debugging process, such as missing verification steps.