<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//NLM//DTD JATS (Z39.96) Journal Publishing DTD v1.0 20120330//EN" "JATS-journalpublishing1.dtd">
<article xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" article-type="article">
  <front>
    <journal-meta>
      <journal-id journal-id-type="publisher-id">INFEDU</journal-id>
      <journal-title-group>
        <journal-title>Informatics in Education</journal-title>
      </journal-title-group>
      <issn pub-type="epub">1648-5831</issn>
      <issn pub-type="ppub">1648-5831</issn>
      <publisher>
        <publisher-name>VU</publisher-name>
      </publisher>
    </journal-meta>
    <article-meta>
      <article-id pub-id-type="publisher-id">INFEDU2021_4_30</article-id>
      <article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.15388/infedu.2021.30</article-id>
      <article-categories>
        <subj-group subj-group-type="heading">
          <subject>Article</subject>
        </subj-group>
      </article-categories>
      <title-group>
        <article-title>A Comparison of Abstraction and Algorithmic Tasks Used in Bebras Challenge</article-title>
      </title-group>
      <contrib-group>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <name>
            <surname>VANÍČEK</surname>
            <given-names>Jiří</given-names>
          </name>
          <email xlink:href="mailto:vanicek@pf.jcu.cz">vanicek@pf.jcu.cz</email>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="j_INFEDU_aff_000"/>
        </contrib>
        <aff id="j_INFEDU_aff_000">Department of Informatics, University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice, Czech Republic</aff>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <name>
            <surname>ŠIMANDL</surname>
            <given-names>Václav</given-names>
          </name>
          <email xlink:href="mailto:simandl@pf.jcu.cz">simandl@pf.jcu.cz</email>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="j_INFEDU_aff_001"/>
        </contrib>
        <aff id="j_INFEDU_aff_001">Department of Informatics, University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice, Czech Republic</aff>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <name>
            <surname>KLOFÁČ</surname>
            <given-names>Patrik</given-names>
          </name>
          <email xlink:href="mailto:pklofac@pf.jcu.cz">pklofac@pf.jcu.cz</email>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="j_INFEDU_aff_002"/>
        </contrib>
        <aff id="j_INFEDU_aff_002">Department of Informatics, University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice, Czech Republic</aff>
      </contrib-group>
      <volume>20</volume>
      <issue>4</issue>
      <fpage>717</fpage>
      <lpage>736</lpage>
      <permissions>
        <copyright-year>2021</copyright-year>
        <copyright-holder>Vilnius University, ETH Zürich</copyright-holder>
        <license license-type="open-access">
          <license-p>Open access article under the CC BY license.</license-p>
        </license>
      </permissions>
      <abstract>
        <p>This paper focuses on the analysis of Bebras Challenge tasks to find Informatics tasks that develop abstract thinking. Our study seeks to find which Bebras tasks develop abstraction and in what way. We analysed hundreds of tasks from the Czech contest to identify those tasks requiring participants to abstract directly or use abstract structures. Results show that an agreement among experts on stating which task is focused on abstraction is at a moderate level. We discovered that tasks focused on abstraction occur four to five times less frequently in sets of contest tasks than algorithmic tasks. Our findings proved that abstract tasks results compared with algorithmic ones did not differ in neither age nor gender group of contestants.</p>
      </abstract>
      <kwd-group>
        <label>Keywords</label>
        <kwd>computer science education</kwd>
        <kwd>secondary school</kwd>
        <kwd>Bebras Challenge</kwd>
        <kwd>abstract tasks</kwd>
        <kwd>task difficulty</kwd>
        <kwd>gender comparison</kwd>
        <kwd>age comparison</kwd>
      </kwd-group>
    </article-meta>
  </front>
</article>
