How effective might tutorials designed around the major learning areas of the VARK framework be to teaching primary school students entry level programming and game design?

Computing and in particular, programming and video game development in UK primary schools are about to receive a big investment. And most primary school children have never been exposed to the many programming languages or what it takes to build a video game, therefore, this research investigates how schools might approach teaching children this area of computing. Also taking into account VARK’s (1987) idea that everyone learns differently; how could schools effectively teach programming and game design to individuals? This was approached by using VARK (1987) heavily as a framework to develop tutorials and exposing them to a traditional classroom environment in primary schools. Observations and interviews with children and teachers suggests that these current forms of tutorials are somewhat effective in teaching the Scratch software package, the effectiveness though, depends on factors that are present in a traditional classroom environment. Refinement of the tutorials as well of more control over classroom factors might improve the effectiveness and reliability of these tutorials.