Reflective teaching of Logo

A long-term instructional experiment assessed the cognitive consequences of reflective teaching practices, compared to inquiry teaching practices, on the acquisition and transfer of Logo computer programming for 2nd- and 5th- grade students. Inquiry teaching represented previous "best practices" in w hich teachers elicited predictions, asked leading questions, and assisted s tudents when they encountered programming impasses. Reflective teaching mod ified inquiry teaching by explicit encouragement of a design stance where s tudents assumed roles as potential designers of Logo as well as actual role s as the designers of their own programs for peer audiences. Other tools fo r reflection included writing summaries of their programming experiences, u sing programming templates, and working with "microworlds" that helped stud ents objectify their experiences with Logo. Multiple levels (syntactic, sem antic, schematic, strategic, and beliefs) of Logo knowledge were measured d uring and after instruction. Between-group differences over repeated measur es consistently favored the group participating in reflective instruction. However, rather than simple differences on every measure, the pattern of me an differences over time was most consistent with Mayer's (1985) proposal o f a chain of cognitive consequences regulating the acquisition of Logo. Mor eover, participation in the reflective context facilitated general transfer of specific skills like debugging and summarization for both grades, but n o differences in general transfer were observed between instructional condi tions for skills not explicitly targeted for instruction. Children particip ating in the reflective context developed beliefs about programming practic es that were tightly coupled with their performances. This tight coupling u nderscores the reciprocal relation between the social and the individual in the acquisition and transfer of cognitive skill.