Educational Robotics (ER) and Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM) have entered schools and are parts of formal and informal education. Consequently, a wide range of relevant activities and interventions, from kindergarten to high school, are carried out emphasizing their potential benefits, in relation to traditional curriculum,…

Programmed control systems are ubiquitous in the present-day world. In current educational practice, however, these systems are hardly being addressed, and little is known about children's spontaneous understandings about such systems. Therefore, we explored pupils' understandings prior to instruction in three concrete settings: a car park, an…

Constructionism has different meanings for what the learner is constructing, a concrete object or an idea, and whether this construction is done through the use of digital technology. In the embodied-based environment created in this study, children carry out or "construct" a series of actions, a performance, which allows them to solve…

This research proposes the integration of robotic education and scenario-based learning (SBL) paradigm for teaching computational thinking (CT) to enhance the computational abilities of primary school students, based on digital innovation and a teaching assistant robot acceptance model. The sample group consisted of 532 primary school teachers and…

Science teachers have been urged to use emerging technologies, such as robots, in ways that empower K-12 students as active participants responsible for their learning and knowledge development within the scientific domain. And yet, little is known about whether the use of robots effectively supports students' epistemic agency in science learning.…

Robots are useful tools for teaching mathematics and physics and engineering subjects in K-12 setting; they can be utilized in classrooms for explaining difficult and complex concepts because they capture the imagination of students. Rapid developments robotics technology in recent decade, institutions and researchers have employed robots to…

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of a robotics-based intervention on elementary-aged students' interest in STEM subjects and careers. Participants were thirty-seven second and third grade students from two classrooms at an elementary school in the Southeastern United States. Action research was used to examine a multifaceted,…

This study consists of a 17-year (2006-2021) systematic literature review on the effective instructional strategies for developing Computational Thinking (CT) in primary school students (K-5). The aim of this paper is to identify instructional strategies that have been implemented and evaluated by means of a pre- and post-test, with the aim of…

The broad case being made in this paper is that recognizing student assets--rather than focusing on deficits--is essential for making engineering education more equitable. The paper begins with our exploration of an epistemic practice of engineering, ''making tradeoffs,'' as enacted by kindergartners after experiencing design failure and during…

The study explored the effects of an interdisciplinary learning approach on developing students' English learning (EL) and computational thinking (CT) through two different game-based learning approaches. A quasi-experiment was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach in terms of enhancing students' CT knowledge and their EL…

Potential benefits of providing elementary school students experiences with coding robots are well-documented. These include building skill sets related to logical thinking, problem solving, persistence, collaboration, and communication (Harrell 2015). The authors embrace the value of coding in helping elementary school students develop these…

Robotics is emerging as an effective strategy for bridging the gap between technology and engineering design in early childhood classrooms (Bers, Seddighin, and Sullivan 2013). Using a science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) grant received from the authors' school, they purchased a KIBO-18 set from KinderLab Robotics…

The international "FIRST® LEGO® League (FLL): Challenge" is a popular educational robotics and STEM competition designed to promote primary and early high school students' STEM interests and careers, and twenty-first century skill development. The "FLL Challenge" currently involves over 318,000 students (aged 9-16 years) in…

Integrating computer science (CS) into school curricula has become a worldwide preoccupation. Therefore, we present a CS and Robotics integration model and its validation through a large-scale pilot study in the administrative region of the Canton Vaud in Switzerland. Approximately 350 primary school teachers followed a mandatory CS continuing…

Computational thinking requires high cognitive load as students work to manage multiple tasks in their problem-solving environment. Through research in K-2 classrooms on computational thinking, we noticed that students lack the representational fluency needed to move from one form to another--such as moving from physical to more abstract…