A Pilot Study Investigating Teachers' Use of Video Games in Programming Lessons

Neil Rickus of King's College London presents a pilot study examining how primary teachers use commercial, off-the-shelf video games, such as Just Dance, to teach programming concepts to pupils aged 9 to 11. Grounded in pedagogical content knowledge and self-determination theory, the work adopts a qualitative multiple case-study approach. Its primary purpose is methodological: to validate the research design before a planned main study across five schools. The pilot itself was conducted in a single English primary school with one experienced teacher and pupils aged 9 to 10, so its scope is limited in geography, sample size, and duration.

The central finding is that the teacher deliberately used familiar games to direct pupils' attention to specific computational elements, such as treating dance moves as algorithm steps. Early familiarisation with the games and visual representations appeared to support conceptual understanding as well as behaviour management. Unplugged, group-based activities and the repeated pairing of technical vocabulary with physical actions were reported to increase engagement, resilience, and recall, with pupils remembering terminology well after lessons ended.

The analysis concludes that the teacher's knowledge of students, curriculum, instructional strategies, and assessment jointly shaped lesson design. However, assessment received limited discussion, and the teacher's beliefs about motivation remain under further analysis. The author is explicit that these results are preliminary and drawn from a single case. Their principal value lies in demonstrating a workable approach for the forthcoming multi-school investigation rather than in producing generalisable conclusions about video-game-based programming instruction.