research-article

Difficulties in Learning Inheritance and Polymorphism

Authors:

Neomi Liberman,

Yifat Ben-David KolikantAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE), Volume 11, Issue 1

Article No.: 4, Pages 1 - 23

https://doi.org/10.1145/1921607.1921611

Published: 01 February 2011 Publication History

Abstract

This article reports on difficulties related to the concepts of inheritance and polymorphism, expressed by a group of 22 in-service CS teachers with an experience with the procedural paradigm, as they coped with a course on OOP. Our findings are based on the analysis of tests, questionnaires that the teachers completed in the course, as well as on observations made during the course. The article suggests that the difficulties are mostly caused by the learners’ ignorance about a programming model for inheritance and polymorphism. Such a model is presented in the appendix. The article offers a classification of the difficulties into the following four clusters: (1) alternative (partial) models, (2) analogies to the use of inheritance and conversion in day-to-day life or in imperative programming, (3) lack of understanding of hierarchies and their role in inheritance, and (4) difficulties due to approaches to teaching, and their impact on the students understanding, as well as, with difficulties that arose in previous stages of learning OOP and have yet not been resolved.

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Index Terms

Difficulties in Learning Inheritance and Polymorphism
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education
        Information science education
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages
      1. Language features
      2. Language types
        Object oriented languages

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Computing Education

ACM Transactions on Computing Education Volume 11, Issue 1

February 2011

98 pages

EISSN:1946-6226

DOI:10.1145/1921607

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2011 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

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Publication History

Published: 01 February 2011

Accepted: 01 August 2010

Revised: 01 July 2010

Received: 01 December 2009

Published in TOCE Volume 11, Issue 1

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Miura M(2023)A Feasibility Study on Learning of Object-Oriented Programming Based on Fairy TalesTowards a Collaborative Society Through Creative Learning10.1007/978-3-031-43393-1_52(579-590)Online publication date: 28-Sep-2023
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Lian VVaroy EGiacaman N(2022)Learning Object-Oriented Programming Concepts Through Visual AnalogiesIEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies10.1109/TLT.2022.315480515:1(78-92)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/TLT.2022.3154805
Abbasi SKazi HKazi AKhowaja KBaloch A(2021)Gauge Object Oriented Programming in Student’s Learning Performance, Normalized Learning Gains and Perceived Motivation with Serious GamesInformation10.3390/info1203010112:3(101)Online publication date: 26-Feb-2021
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Mills NWang AGiacaman N(2021)Visual Analogy for Understanding Polymorphism TypesProceedings of the 23rd Australasian Computing Education Conference10.1145/3441636.3442304(48-57)Online publication date: 2-Feb-2021
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Gross JOliviera GCoogan KZhang JSherriff MHeckman SCutter PMonge A(2020)Toward a Model of Polymorphism ComprehensionProceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3328778.3372664(1371-1371)Online publication date: 26-Feb-2020
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Ardimento PBernardi MCimitile M(2020)Software Analytics to Support Students in Object-Oriented Programming Tasks: An Empirical StudyIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2020.30101728(132171-132187)Online publication date: 2020
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Coffey J(2019)Categorizing and ameliorating generalization-specialization design mistakes in an intermediate programming classJournal of Computing Sciences in Colleges10.5555/3344081.334408434:7(28-37)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2019
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