”How does the computer carry out digitalRead()?” Notional Machines Mediated Learner Conceptual Agency within an Introductory High School Electronic Textiles Unit

Learners in computing classrooms must develop and adopt viable conceptions of program dynamics to read, write, and debug programs within a given programming context. Learners find support in notional machines, or simplified notions about underlying program behavior within a programming context, that educators provide them. While prior studies have examined students’ use of notional machines to trace program execution during interviews or quizzes, learners’ interactions with them within classrooms is understudied. Framing learning with notional machines as a sociocultural process, I conducted an interaction analysis of high school students’ learning across eight class periods during a 14-week introductory computing electronic textiles online unit to answer the questions: (1) How did students interact with program dynamics during the unit? (2) Did notional machines support students with computing conceptual agency? If so, how? Findings revealed that learners interacted with program dynamics in agentic ways as they adopted notional machines to reason, ask questions about, reveal and revise their notions of program execution. While prior studies have explored notional machines’ affordance for mental model development, this study revealed their situated nature and their role in making program dynamics visible and accessible for sustained joint exploration within classrooms. Findings from this analysis make a three-fold contribution: they highlight the mediating role of notional machines in supporting agentic learner interaction with program dynamics, their role in sustaining joint meaning-making within computing classrooms, and their evolving nature as a result of continuous interactions between the learners and the teacher.