Sylvia da Rosa: The construction of knowledge of basic algorithms and data structures by novice learners

Piaget's theory offers a model for explaining the construction of knowledge that can be
used in all domains and at all levels of development, based on establishing certain parallels between
general mechanisms leading from one form of knowledge to another, both in psychogenesis and in
the historical evolution of ideas and theories. The most important notion of these mechanisms is
the triad of stages, called by Piaget the intra, inter and trans stages. The main goal of our work
is to build an instance of that model for research about the knowledge of basic algorithms and
data structures constructed by novice students. This paper presents some aspects of our work,
focusing on the passage from conceptual knowledge (intra-inter stages) to formalized knowledge
(trans stage).