Research indicates that understanding levels of abstraction (LOA) and being able to move between the levels is essential to programming success. For K-5 contexts we rename the LOA levels: problem, design, code and running the code.  In our qualitative exploratory study, we interviewed five K-5 teachers on their uses of LOA, particularly the design level, in teaching programming and other subjects. Using PCK elements to analyse responses we found our teachers used design as an instructional strategy and for assessment. Our teachers used design as an aide memoire and the expert teachers used design: as a contract for pair-programming; to work out what they needed to teach; for learners to annotate with code snippets (to transition across LOA); for learners to self-assess and to assess ‘do-ability’. Teachers used planning in teaching writing to scaffold learning and promote self-regulation revealing their understanding of student understanding. One issue was of our teachers' knowledge of terms including algorithm and code; we propose a concept of ‘emergent algorithms’. Our findings suggest design helps learners learn to program in the same way that planning helps learners learn to write and that LOA, particularly the design level, may provide an accessible exemplar of abstraction in action. Further work is needed to verify whether our results are generalisable more widely.

Programming can be challenging to learn and for visually impaired (VI) learners there are numerous additional barriers to the learning process. Many modern programming environments are inaccessible to VI learners, being difficult or impossible to interface with using a screen reader. A review of the literature has identified a number of strategies that have been employed in the quest to make learning to program accessible to VI learners. These can be broadly divided into the following categories; auditory and haptic feedback, making text-based langauges (TBLs) accessible, making block-based languages (BBLs) accessible and physical artefacts.A common theme among the literature is the difficulty VI learners have in gaining an understanding of the overall structure of their code. Much of the research carried out in this space to date focuses on the evaluation of interventions aimed at VI high-school and undergraduate students, with limited attention given to the learning processes of VI learners. Additionally, the majority of the research deals with (TBLs), this is despite the fact that most introductory programming courses for primary learners use (BBLs). Therefore, further research is urgently needed to investigate potential strategies for introducing VI children in primary education to programming and the learning processes involved.

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