Interactive Learning of Recursion

Abstract

One concept that has proved to be especially difficult to comprehend in computer science education is recursion. This chapter provides an overview of past efforts on the teaching of recursion. The authors first introduce concepts and models about the teaching and learning of recursion. In particular, they identify models used by teachers to explain recursion (i.e. conceptual models) and models used by students in their learning process (i.e. mental models). Afterwards, they review the teaching methods used in the past. Finally, the authors survey visualization and animation systems for recursion, explaining how they support conceptual models and how they try to remove wrong mental models. They also include a comprehensive technical comparison of the systems and review the evaluations these systems have been subject to.