The architecture of children’s use of language and tools when problem solving collaboratively with robotics

Abstract

This paper demonstrates, following Vygotsky, that language and tool use has a critical role in the collaborative problem-solving behaviour of school-age children. It reports original ethnographic classroom research examining the convergence of speech and practical activity in children's collaborative problem solving with robotics programming tasks. The researchers analysed children's interactions during a series of problem solving experiments in which Lego Mindstorms toolsets were used by teachers to create robotics design challenges among 24 students in a Year 4 Australian classroom (students aged 8.5-9.5 years). The design challenges were incrementally difficult, beginning with basic programming of straight line movement, and progressing to more complex challenges involving programming of the robots to raise Lego figures from conduit pipes using robots as pulleys with string and recycled materials. Data collection involved micro-genetic analysis of students' speech interactions with tools, peers, and other experts, teacher interviews, and student focus group data. Coding the repeated patterns in the transcripts, the authors outline the structure of the children's social speech in joint problem solving, demonstrating the patterns of speech and interaction that play an important role in the socialisation of the school-age child's practical intellect.

Applying Robotics in School Education: a Systematic Review

“…they are usually used in the after-school or summer camp program. Exceptions were introduced by five articles, one of which noted that teachers integrated their work into conventional teaching (Varney et al, 2012;), three articles described the use of robots by teachers in one of their classes (Mills et al, 2013;McDonald et al, 2012;Fridin, 2014), while the remaining article evaluated different methods of implementing of the program into the educational curriculum of 5 schools (Nicholas et al, 2012).…”

“…The study analyses the structure of children's speech according to the problem-solving methodology by applying robots as a teaching aid in STEM. (Mills et al, 2013). McDonald (McDonald et al, 2012) analyzed topics related to STEM subjects, but obtained positive results and the effect on the social skills of communication.…”

“…Huskens et al, 2013;Jordan et al, 2013 While creating robotics models children's social speech has significantly improved. Mills et al, 2013;Hung et al, 2013 A robot teaching assistant for the use in language learning activities has significantly improved students' learning motivation and learning efficiency. Hung et al, 2013;McDonald et al, 2012;McLurkin et al, 2013 Through the problem-based learning and complex robotic (satellites) programming students have significantly improved their mathematics, physics, strategical planning, and communication skills.…”

“…Cuperman et al, 2013 Professional development workshops on use of robots are introduced one year before the launch of the study. Mills et al, 2013 Teachers are provided with all information needed to prepare for the lesson, including lesson plans, Power Point presentation, hands-on manuals and assessment tasks. This material helps teachers present new material and engage the pupils in activities by using the new methodology.…”

Windfield

“…Studies that are concerned with collaborative learning aim to measure social interactions among the learners and group dynamics. Such studies are relatively new and less numerous in the domain of robots for education; examples are [24] (teaching geometry) and [7,20,44,15] (teaching programming and robotics). We aim to not only improve the currently lacking subject coverage, but also equip our platform with natural collaborative aspects by designing low cost, replaceable robots that operate in large numbers.…”