Variables and Variable Naming in Popular Programming Textbooks for Children and Novices

In programming, the concept of variables is central to learning other concepts like loops, functions, and conditions, and the way variables are explained influences students' understanding. Prior work observed Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on introductory programming to investigate how the topic is addressed in teaching materials. Our work aims to verify if their results generalize to other materials by analyzing 13 popular Scratch and Python programming books and investigating (1) which definitions and analogies are currently being used to explain the variables, (2) looking into the programming concepts that are introduced alongside variables, and (3) analyzing if and how variable naming practices are introduced. Our results support previous findings from MOOCs, suggesting that CS educators and developers of educational materials for introductory programming could pay more attention to how they explain variables and can be more deliberate and consistent when it concerns the teaching of naming practices. Additionally, we found specific analogies used to explain variables, and differences between programming languages in the order that variables are introduced. Our work can be used to update current educational materials and inform the development of new ones.