Models and methods for computing education research

We have been engaged in computing education research for close to two decades. One characteristic of the field has been a preponderance of exploratory research, Marco Polo papers as Valentine termed them. Even considering the entire research corpus it is hard to discern a clear trend in terms of models and methods for conducting research. While some prominent researchers, such as Fincher, have established a tradition of mixed method research and multi-institutional studies, these approaches form a branch of the discipline and do not constitute a dominant paradigm. Indeed computing education research demonstrates an observable eclecticism in relation to method, combining as it does approaches from a range of qualitative and quantitative research traditions. A consequence of this is that we have spent time on thinking about the research area as a whole. We believe that a key defining feature of computing education research is the focus on learning in the discipline. The point of departure for much computing education research is consequently a need to address educational challenges in the discipline, rather than a standpoint in an educational tradition. This places the research objective, or question, in focus and makes the choice of method a secondary concern for many computing education researchers. In this article we discuss the nature of a broader emerging paradigm for conducting educational research, and a framework which can scaffold working within this paradigm.