in Introductory Programming Education

ii Examples are important when we attempt to learn something new. To learn prob-lem solving and programming is an acknowledged difficulty. Teaching and learning introductory object oriented problem solving and programming has been discussed extensively since the late 1990’ies, when a major shift to object orientation as first programming paradigm took place. Initially, this switch was not considered to cause any major problems, because of the accumulated knowledge for how pro-gramming should be taught. This turned out to be naive. Knowledge gained for the imperative paradigm did not apply well to the object oriented paradigm. Because of its importance for the field of computer science, introductory pro-gramming education has drawn a lot of attention. Most of the research done in connection to object oriented problem solving and programming has been focused on students learning and the difficulty to acquire skills in programming. Less investigated is the foundation of the educational mission, the characteris