Developing Teacher Confidence in Robotics and Computation; Case Studies From a Collaborative European Project

Author(s):

Jan Georgeson(submitting)Linda la Velle(presenting)Patrick Camilleri

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

16. ICT in Education and Training

Format:

Paper

Session Information

16 SES 07, ICT and Educational Innovation

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-23

17:15-18:45

Room:

W4.23

Chair:

Göran Fransson

Contribution

This paper reports on the second stage of a three year collaborative project to develop teaching in computation for primary schools, involving European partners from schools, universities and training institutions in five countries. The project aims to develop and disseminate pedagogical materials in response to the rapidly changing curriculum developments for information technology (ICT), including computer programming and robotics, across five countries (Denmark, Lithuania Malta, Spain and UK). New curricula aim to empower pupils to use and express themselves through ICT, to develop competences for their future workplaces and become active participants in the digital world. The challenge to educators is how to support children to develop skills for work with and on the programmable devices of the future, when the field of programming keeps changing.

We have taken a lead from the observation by Knuth (1984:1) that ‘instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do’; we have therefore adopted a relational approach both to helping us understand the role of the programmer, and to understanding how people learn about programming. In other words we understand that, if the children of today want to be successful future programmers, they should start by defining problems, working creatively towards solutions and communicating the whole process to someone else, using shared symbols. Our project therefore incorporates the ‘4Cs’ of 21st century learning - Collaboration, Communication, Creativity and Critical thinking – with ICT at the core (Denis and Hubert, 2001; Voogt and Pareja Roblin, 2010).

However, although changes might be expected as the first ‘digitally native’ teachers join the profession, many teachers currently lack confidence and competence in ICT (Morris, 2012; Wastiau et al., 2013). The project therefore aims to provide professional development for primary teachers in the fields of robotics and programming, taking into account their curricular context. In phase 1 of the project, to ensure a good match between project content and current needs, we used questionnaires and literature searches to answer the questions: what are teachers’ current attitudes towards and confidence/competence in these topics in the project schools? And where do coding, programming and robotics sit within curriculum frameworks within the five countries? A curriculum summary was compiled by project team members for each country and an online survey completed by staff in the ten project schools. We found that coding and programming featured in some but not all curricula, and that the topic of robotics had different cultural connotations across and within the five countries. These findings reinforced our aims to look at ways of developing skills in coding and appreciation of robotics through a focus on 4Cs of 21st century learning; promotion of collaboration, communication, creativity and critical thinking are acceptable pedagogic aims in all contexts, not just those where robotics and coding were already embedded.

After brief case studies showing how coding, programming and robotics have been interpreted within the sociocultural context of the five countries, we will report on the second phase of the project, namely the design and piloting of a sequence of training sessions to develop teacher confidence in the coding and programing, conducted in three schools in the UK. The materials will be shared with partner countries so that they may adapt them in their own contexts during the final phase of the project in 2017-2018. Our research question for this phase of the project is: how do different professional development experiences enhance teachers' confidence in using robotics equipment to teach children about programming?

Method

We have adopted a facet methodological approach to document and analyse how the project is supporting the development of teachers’ professional understanding of robotics through the provision of subject and pedagogic content knowledge. We need to accommodate the views and priorities of the diverse project partnership, which includes busy teachers, many of whom do not speak English as a first language. Facet methodology employs ‘different lines of enquiry, and different ways of seeing. The approach aims to create a strategically illuminating set of facets in relation to specific research concerns and questions. The rigour of the approach comes ultimately from researcher skill, inventiveness, creativity, insight and imagination in deciding how best to carve the facets so that they catch the light in the best possible way (Mason 2011: 75). We hare therefore collecting artefacts, photographs and recordings from project meetings to capture the progress of the project. We are monitoring teachers’ confidence by comparing responses to a baseline questionnaire for staff at the start of the project, and followed by an interim questionnaire for phase 2, both completed anonymously online to allow for confidentiality and honest responding. In addition teachers’ reflections on the project are being captured by face-to-face, Skype and email interviews, and observations of training sessions and classroom activities. We have offered a variety of formats for reflection to accommodate the preferences of teachers for whom English is not their first language. In the three UK primary schools where the training materials are being developed, we designed questionnaires for children to report their confidence and awareness of robotics and related aspects of computing. However, children also preferred to interview each other about their experiences of classroom robotics sessions, some of which have been designed and led by the children themselves, and of out-of-school activities such a Lego Leagues and clubs. Children and parents were also interviewed by researchers about their experiences of robotics in and out of class, and about the artefacts that they have produced. All elements of the research process have been reviewed by Plymouth Institute of Education ethics committee, and protocols revised in response to their comments. Findings will be analysed using an Activity Theory framework which will enable us to look at how values and rules, and resources (both physical and conceptual, including curricula) shape the engagement with robotics and the development of teachers’ expertise (Roth et al., 2009).

Expected Outcomes

Emerging findings show that implementation of teaching using robotics equipment is driven by resources, with different resources used to develop children’s familiarity with and understanding of what robots can do and how they can be programmed – and so with the developing of their coding skills. This is process is constrained by pragmatics of availability of resources and time both within school programmes and for teachers to prepare and develop their own facility with different resources. These constraints are played out differently in different contexts, and influenced by local feelings about robotics and employment and/or threats to the labour force. A second strand within early findings from the project concerns the development of expertise. At this stage in the project, familiarity with key concepts such as loops as well as skills in trouble-shooting and debugging are not part of all teachers’ repertoire. The reasons behind this differ across contexts, and relate to the place of robotics/programming in the curriculum; is it part of a discrete school subject, or a tool used to support learning in several areas of the curriculum? However, even in countries where programming is now part of the national curriculum, not all teachers are confident, Emerging findings suggest that the presence of local ‘robotics champions’ might deter the development of expertise in other members of staff, perhaps because a lack of time for teachers to ‘play’ with robotics equipment alongside more knowledgeable colleagues can limit teachers’ developing understanding of what to do when ‘it doesn’t work'. The paper will report on further analyses of these and related findings to support the development of a rationale for teaching and learning skills in coding and programming in different curricula, highlighting the relevance of robotics to pupils’ education in the context of the 4C's of 21st century learning.

References

Denis and Hubert (2001) Collaborative learning in an educational robotics environment. Computers in Human Behavior 17 pp 465–480 Knuth, D.E (1984) Literate Programming. The Computer Journal 27 (2) pp. 97-111. Retrieved 25 January 2016 from http://www.literateprogramming.com/knuthweb.pdf Mason, J. (2011) Facet Methodology: the case for an inventive research orientation. Methodological Innovations Online (2011) 6(3) 75 – 92 Morris 2012ICT and educational policy in the UK: are we on the way towards e-maturity or on the road to digital disaster? Research in Teacher Education Vol.2, No.2. October 2012. pp. 3–8. Roth, W-M., Lee, Y-J. and Hsu, P‐L. (2009) A tool for changing the world: possibilities of cultural‐historical activity theory to reinvigorate science education, Studies in Science Education, 45:2, 131-167, DOI: 10.1080/03057260903142269 Voogt, J. & Pareja Roblin, N. (2010). 21st Century Skills – Discussion Paper. Enschede (The Netherlands): University of Twente. Retrieved 25 January 2016 from http://onderzoek.kennisnet.nl/onderzoeken-totaal/21stecentury Wastiau, P., Blamire, R., Kearney, C., Quittre, V.,Van de Gaer E. and Monseu C. (2013) The Use of ICT in Education: a survey of schools. European Journal of Education, Part I p11-27

Author Information

Jan Georgeson (submitting)

University of Plymouth, United Kingdom

Linda la Velle (presenting)

University of Plymouth, United Kingdom

Patrick Camilleri

University of Malta, Malta

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