Posibles aportes del razonamiento analógico al problema de la abstracción y transferencia en la enseñanza de programación

This review article explores a possible contribution of research on analogical reasoning to the problem of transfer in programming -in the transition between the learning of concepts in middle school and their application at university. The ease with which students construct programs in multimedia environments carries the disadvantage of translating these concepts into “real” text-based languages, probably because not enough work has been done on the problem level. According to research in teaching programming, students tend to have greater difficulty at higher levels of abstraction (understanding the problem) than at lower levels (such as coding). Comparing problems through analogical reasoning is a strategy from cognitive psychology extended to various disciplines. We suggest that its application in programming teaching could contribute to solving the problem of the difficulty of abstraction at the problem level and facilitate the transfer.