Determining Abstraction Levels and Programming Behaviors of Pre-Service Teachers of Information Technologies According to the Neo-Piagetean Theory

The aim of this research is to determine abstraction skills of the information technology teacher candidates according to the new Piagetian theory. Determining theparticipants’ programming behaviors according to the determined abstraction levels is another purpose of this research. The research is designed as a qualitative research. Participants of the research consisted of 15 information technologies teacher candidates who enrolled in the Internet Based Programming course in the Department of Computer Education and Instructional Technology and volunteered to take part in the research. The students were asked to answer three questions, one for coding a program, and two for reading codes. The code reading questions were answered on the paper and program coding question was answered on the computer. Students’ thinking aloud protocol recodings were the main data source, recordings of students code writing processes and written responses to code reading questions were used as auxiliary data source. Two of the students were found to be at psychomotor stage according to the new Piagetian theory, six of the students were at the pre-opperational stage and five of them were at the concrete operational stage.