Content Misconceptions

Misconception: students develop the habit of putting the type in front of variables; they don’t realize that this creates a new variable resulting in lots of variables with the same name.

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Misconception: students struggle with scopes of variables and may not understand when a variable can be accessed and when it cannot be accessed.

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Remind students to match types on both sides of the equations because they often try to combine types when creating variables.

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Explore students’ syntax errors to reveal their misconceptions.

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Misconception: Students mistakenly believe comparison expressions use the same syntax in math, English, and logic.

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Misconception: In Java, students struggle with equal signs because they mistakenly see them as a sign of symmetry.

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Misconception: With conditionals, students may try to compare the memory address of a function to a number, like x < foo, when they intended to compare x with the return value of foo.

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Misconception: Students believe that while loops tell the program when to stop rather than when to continue.

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Use physical representations of zoom levels to help students understand why image quality changes when zooming in and out.

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Remember that many misconceptions regarding linked lists also occur when dealing with binary search trees so that you are prepared to identify and correct them.

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