Computing education’s superbug: interrogating the computer-mind metaphors

In one of the significant results from early computing education research, Pea identifies a computer-as-mind metaphor that novices use in ascribing mental properties of personhood to the computer, which causes students considerable conceptual confusion. In characterizing this as students’ superbug, Pea uses a mind-as-computer metaphor, the converse metaphor to the one that students use. In doing so, he makes visible a metaphor that has become one of the predominant metaphors of mind in mid- to late-20th century theorizing in psychology and the cognitive sciences. I take both of these metaphors (computer-as-mind and mind-as-computer) to be the superbug that plagues not only student attempts to program but also computing education more broadly. The purpose of this paper is to argue that these computer-mind metaphors are a steady undercurrent that runs from the cognitive sciences through computing education and the research on it, what is problematic about these metaphors, what causes this metaphorical affliction, why we might want to cure ourselves from it, and how we can do so. Key to this cure is to counter disembodied views of human reasoning and action, epitomized in first generation cognitive science, with embodied and enactive theoretical perspectives, epitomized in second generation cognitive science and in multimodal and embodied approaches to the social sciences.