Cognitive conflicts in collaborative programming and their impact on computational concept acquisition

Collaborative programming has become an increasingly important approach for developing computational thinking. The occurrence and resolution of cognitive conflicts have been considered an essential opportunity for students to acquire and construct the corresponding computational concepts. Managing students' cognitive conflicts might critically impact students' learning performance and experience. This study aims to analyze students' collaborative dialogue texts from the time series perspective to explore the cognitive conflict management patterns in collaborative programming activities and examine students' acquisition of computational concepts and collaborative experience in different cognitive conflict management patterns. Participants were 48 seventh-grade students. Participants were asked to attend a lecture for four weeks and then randomly assigned to 16 groups of three. Each group was asked to work on three programming tasks in three weeks collaboratively. Students' dialogue during the collaboration was audio-recorded for examining their cognitive conflict behaviors. After which, students were asked to complete a test of computational concepts and a questionnaire about their collaborative experience. Four cognitive conflict management patterns were identified: leadership manipulation, consensus-seeking, relationship protection, and discussion construction. Students using the discussion construction pattern demonstrated the strongest understanding of computational concepts and had more positive collaborative experiences. This study highlights the importance of structured debate processes in managing cognitive conflicts and enhancing knowledge acquisition and collaborative experiences. The findings provide actionable insights for educators to guide students in effectively managing cognitive conflicts during collaborative programming. • In collaborative programming, groups manage cognitive conflicts in diverse ways. • Cognitive conflict management patterns affect computational concept acquisition. • Discussion-constructing patterns lead to more computational concept acquisition. • In-depth debate in conflict management is key to effective collaborative programming.