The best research plans rarely ever come to fruition if you fail to scope them correctly: this has been simultaneously the most important and the hardest lesson I’ve learned thus far in graduate school. When I initially began my journey as a PhD student in 2020, I had only a rough idea of the field of Computer Science education, and while one of the first courses I took was specifically designed to help provide me with a gateway into the field, I found myself at a loss with what specifically I wanted to investigate. I remember the assignment vividly; I was tasked with proposing a region of research that interested me, and thus this became the focus of my work for the next year and a half. I somewhat naively chose to investigate students’ mental models (or internal representations for) recursion, a programming method/paradigm commonly found in Computer Science. While I initially believed that I had scoped the problem in an appropriate manner, it wasn’t until later that I realized that recursion serves as both a region of potential in terms of unexplored research as well as an impossible pit of rabbit holes and loosely justified reasons for systemic norms and practices. My retrospective on this work is not a criticism of myself two years ago; nor is it a criticism of my advisor. my advisor provided me both the support as well as the freedom to learn and grow into the field of Computer Science education on my own terms, something that I am eternally grateful for. The purpose of this reflection, however, is to document and assess my initial conceptions of Computer Science education, as well as my initial goals for my dissertation. Furthermore, an additional goal of this reflection is to provide myself a chance to reflect upon what I have learned in the last roughly two to three years of doing research in this space, and how I can apply what I have learned to my future work.

Last fall, I hit somewhat of a wall with my work regarding recursion. While up to that moment I had an idea of what my contribution to education research surround recursion could be, I found through completing the systematic literature review I had finished findings that indicated to me several truths regarding recursion. The most impactful finding was that there was no single contribution I could make to our understanding of students and recursion that would be both appropriate in size and scope for a dissertation while also impactful to Computer Science education as a field. It took me a further semester to admit defeat, and while I am actively finishing the work I have done regarding recursion, I am now looking to refocus my work towards more meaningful lines of rhetoric.

This reflection serves as a roadmap of what I have done, tried, and failed at with regards to my research in the process of getting to my third year in the DEE PhD program. I do not consider this to have been wasted time or effort; rather I know I have gained perspective into what effective, impactful research should consist of. Furthermore, I have taken the work I have done in consideration as I approach the next steps in my dissertation process. While I feel strongly that what I have been working on does not serve as an appropriate dissertation topic, it has brought to my attention other ideas and areas of potential research. The area I am most strongly considering right now is investigating the liminality of senior Computer Science students’ identity and sense of belonging as they transition from Computer Science students to professionals. Particularly, I wish to understand what factors may influence students to not believe the professional sector is for them and look at what students choose to leave Computer Science as a field post-graduation and why.