Reflections on Theory

In this paper, I reflect on how my personal conceptions on “theory” have developed and become more diverse and elaborated during my career. I discuss early conceptions I learned in school and during my university studies, followed by the growing awareness of computing education research as a field that is distinct from many areas of computer science. Becoming aware of how research is carried out in social sciences and how theories are used in these contexts raised my interest in understanding what this implies for computing education research as a field, which has been building its own identity during the past 20+ years.