Debugging Debugging Instruction: A Research-Practice Partnership in K-8 Computer Science Education

Through a collaboration between a Minnesota-based CS education non-profit, learning scientists, and elementary and middle-school CS educators, we are collaborating to envision new ways to support students with the frequent impasses they experience when writing code. In this paper, we describe how we worked toward recognizing problems of practice, built on prior interaction analyses of classroom discourse, assembled a team of CS educators, developed (and critiqued) our shared language around debugging, articulated our rationale for particular learning designs, and calibrated our approach. We hope this paper serves as one concrete and generative example of how to use classroom-based interaction analyses as points of departure for empowering teacher-driven pedagogical imaginings.