Understanding growth mindset practices in an introductory physical computing classroom: high school students’ engagement with debugging by design activities

Background and Context While debugging is recognized as an essential practice, for many students, encountering bugs can generate emotional responses such as fear and anxiety that can lead to disengagement and the avoidance of computer programming. Growth mindsets can support perseverance and learning in these situations, yet few studies have investigated how growth mindsets emerge in practice amongst K–12 computing students facing physical computing debugging challenges.