Novice Java Programmers' Conceptions of "Object" and "Class", and Variation Theory

Anna Eckerdal

Michael Thuné

Problems with understanding concepts, so called misconceptions, have been investigated and reported in a number of studies regarding object-oriented programming [4], [3]. In a first programming course using an object-oriented language, it is of great importance that students get a good understanding of central concepts like object and class at an early stage of their education. We have, with a phenomenographic research approach, performed a study with first year university students, investigating what an understanding of the concepts object and class includes from a student perspective. By applying variation theory [8] to our results we are able to pin-point what the students need to be able to discern in order to gain a "rich" understanding of these concepts.