The paper presents research that aims to expose students’ understanding of the this reference in object-oriented programming. The study was conducted with high school students (N = 86) and college engineering students (N = 77). Conceptualization of this reflects an understanding of objects in general and involves aspects of programming variants and programmers’ preferences as well. To examine students’ conceptions, perceptions, and misconceptions we developed a diagnostic tool that uses this in various contexts, such as in constructors, as a visible parameter, for calling an overloaded constructor in class, or while transiting a non-static method using this to a static one. The detailed analysis revealed difficulties, in both groups of participants, in conceptualizing the meaning of this as the current object and in its various uses in the code. The discussion presents students’ conceptions of “what is this”, nine misconceptions that we characterized, and answers to our research questions. The conclusion offers recommendations for teaching and learning processes in light of the results obtained.

本文提出的研究旨在揭示学生在面向对象编程中对该参考的理解。该研究是针对高中生（N  = 86）和大学工程系学生（N  = 77）进行的。这种概念化反映了对对象的一般理解，并且涉及编程变体和程序员的偏爱方面。为了检查学生的概念，观念和误解，我们开发了一种诊断工具，该工具在各种情况下都使用此工具，例如在构造函数中，将其作为可见参数，用于在课堂上调用重载的构造函数，或者在使用此方法传递非静态方法时变成静态的 详细的分析表明，在这两组参与者中，很难将其作为当前对象的含义及其在代码中的各种用法概念化。该讨论给出学生的观念‘是什么这个’九个误解是我们的特点，并回答我们的研究问题。结论根据所获得的结果为教学过程提供了建议。