Programming is now included in mathematics curricula in several countries; thus, the purpose of this literature review is to determine the research-based justifications for these educational decisions. From a selection of relevant articles, 15 articles were identified and analyzed, each of which had varying study types, themes, and designs. Three themes from the studies were identified: the motivation to learn mathematics, student performance in mathematics, and the collaboration between students and the changed role of the teacher. It was found that in certain circumstances, including programming in mathematics education could improve student motivation to learn mathematics and improve student performance in mathematics. To gain a better understanding of the potential of programming in mathematics education, the entire collective learning process should be considered by discussing the roles of the teacher and the collaboration between students as part of these roles.

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There are several countries that integrate programming into their mathematics curricula, thereby making robotics an interesting aspect of mathematics education. However, the benefits of using robotics for mathematics education are still unclear. This article addresses the use of mathematical tools with robot-based problem-solving activities by discussing how mathematical tools are used in robot-based activities. This ethnographic intervention study took place in one secondary school in Norway as a part of an elective class in which videotaped data were gathered by observing the activities of a group of two or three students using Lego Mindstorm robots during an eight-week period. Through the use of activity system analysis in Cultural Historical Activity Theory, the analysis found that students use different kinds of mathematical tools. Furthermore, mathematics can change its role from instrumental tool to object, that is, to an integrated aspect of the purpose of the activity.

The original version of this article unfortunately contained mistakes.The concept of "activity" is replaced with word "task" in several places. This has a major impact on the quality of our article because the concept of "activity" is very central in the theory we have used. Also the word "proportion" is replaced with word "ratio".