Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Design and Impact of a Teacher Training Course, and Attitude Change Concerning Educational Robotics

  • Published:
International Journal of Social Robotics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Current initiatives and laboratories concerning Educational Robotics (ER) are often not based on strong pedagogical backgrounds. Additionally, they are carried out by inadequately trained teachers, and are not evaluated properly in terms of effectiveness. Moreover, according to teachers, ER usability is often neglected. The main goal of the present article is to present a training course on ER (Edu.Ro.Co.), grounded in pedagogical insights, and to discuss the results of the course and teacher’s opinion about ER in terms of: (i) teachers’ attitudes and perceptions of using ER; (ii) the potential impact of ER on students’ key competences for lifelong learning; and (iii) strengths and weaknesses of ER. These aspects were analysed by means of questionnaires specifically designed by the authors, and administered before and after the training course. A total of 339 teachers attended the training course and 254 completed the questionnaires. The article describes the methodology utilised in the realisation of the course and analyses the questionnaire’s results. In particular, the number of teachers that considered themselves prepared to apply ER significantly improved after the training course. ER is considered by teachers an important tool for the improvement of students’ motivation, planning skills, team working, problem solving and creativity development. Finally, the results from questionnaires indicate that teachers consider ER, a method that improves team-working abilities and motivation in the students. In contrast, the main disadvantage is the cost of the robotic kits. Based on these results, new directions for future research in ER are discussed.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Benitti FBV (2012) Exploring the educational potential of robotics in schools: a systematic review. Comput Educ 58(3):978–988

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Alimisis D (2013) Educational robotics: open questions and new challenges. Themes Sci Technol Educ 6(1):63–71

    Google Scholar 

  3. Piaget J (1973) To understand is to invent: the future of education. Grossman, New York

    Google Scholar 

  4. Papert S (1980) Mindstorms: children, computers, and powerful ideas. Basic Books Inc, New York

    Google Scholar 

  5. Papert S, Harel I (1991) Situating constructionism. Constructionism 36(2):1–11

    Google Scholar 

  6. Datteri E, Zecca L (2016) The game of science: an experiment in synthetic roboethology with primary school children. IEEE Robot Autom Mag 23(2):24–29

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Kearney C (2011) Efforts to increase students’ interests in pursuing science, technology, engineering and mathematics studies and careers. In: National measures taken by 21 of European Schoolnet’s Member Countries. European Schoolnet, Brussels. http://www.fisme.science.uu.nl/publicaties/literatuur/2011_european_schoolnet.pdf

  8. Skinner EA, Belmont MJ (1993) Motivation in the classroom: reciprocal effects of teacher behavior and student engagement across the school year. J Educ Psychol 85(4):571

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Kim C, Kim D, Yuan J, Hill RB, Doshi P, Thai CN (2015) Robotics to promote elementary education pre-service teachers’ STEM engagement, learning, and teaching. Comput Educ 91:14–31

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Greene BA, Miller RB, Crowson HM, Duke BL, Akey KL (2004) Predicting high school students’ cognitive engagement and achievement: contributions of classroom perceptions and motivation. Contemp Educ Psychol 29(4):462–482

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Archer L, DeWitt J, Osborne J, Dillon J, Willis B, Wong B (2013) Not girly, not sexy, not glamorous: primary school girls’ and parents’ constructions of science aspirations. Pedagogy Cult Soc 21(1):171–194

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Maltese AV, Tai RH (2010) Eyeballs in the fridge: sources of early interest in science. Int J Sci Educ 32(5):669–685

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Palogiannidi E, Koutsakis P, Losif E, Potamianos, A (2016) Affective lexicon creation for the Greek language. In: 10th edition of the Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC), 23–28 May 2016, Portorož, Slovenia

  14. Kennedy J, Baxter P, Belpaeme T (2017) Nonverbal immediacy as a characterisation of social behaviour for human-robot interaction. Int J Soc Robot 9(1):109–128

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Castellano G, Paiva A, Kappas A, Aylett R, Hastie H, Barendregt W, Bull S (2013, July) Towards empathic virtual and robotic tutors. In: International conference on artificial intelligence in education. Springer, Berlin, pp 733–736

    Google Scholar 

  16. Bredenfeld A, Hofmann A, Steinbauer G (2010) Robotics in education initiatives in Europe-status, shortcomings and open questions. In: Proceedings of international conference on simulation, modeling and programming for autonomous robots (SIMPAR 2010) workshops, pp 568–574

  17. Bogue R (2014) The future of robotics in Europe. Ind Robot Int J 41(6):487–492

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Capuzza V, Picozza E, Spirito N (2016) La buona scuola: introduzione alla riforma dell’istruzione italiana. G Giappichelli Editore

  19. Osborne J, Dillon J (2008) Science education in Europe: critical reflections, vol 13. The Nuffield Foundation, London

    Google Scholar 

  20. https://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/PISA-2012-results-italy.pdf

  21. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/IT/TXT/?uri=uriserv:OJ.L_.2006.394.01.0010.01.ITA&toc=OJ:L:2006:394:FULL

  22. Greenberg J, McKee A, Walsh K (2013) Teacher prep review: A review of the nation’s teacher preparation programs. Available at SSRN 2353894. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED543515.pdf

  23. Mataric MJ, Koenig NP, Feil-Seifer D (2007, March) Materials for enabling hands-on robotics and STEM education. In: AAAI spring symposium: semantic scientific knowledge integration. pp 99–102

  24. Albirini A (2006) Teachers’ attitudes toward information and communication technologies: the case of Syrian EFL teachers. Comput Educ 47(4):373–398

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Adams AE, Miller BG, Saul M, Pegg J (2014) Supporting elementary pre-service teachers to teach STEM through place-based teaching and learning experiences. Electron J Sci Educ 18(5):1–22

    Google Scholar 

  26. Kim KH, Choi HS, Baek JE (2014) A study on the teachers’ perception of school curriculum implementation about robot-based education in Korea concept of robot-based education. Adv Sci Technol Lett 59:105–108

    Google Scholar 

  27. Barker BS, Ansorge J (2007) Robotics as means to increase achievement scores in an informal learning environment. J Res Technol Educ 39(3):229–243

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Kay JS, Moss JG, Engelman S, McKlin T (2014, March) Sneaking in through the back door: introducing K-12 teachers to robot programming. In: Proceedings of the 45th ACM technical symposium on computer science education. ACM, pp 499–504

  29. Alimisis D, Arlegui J, Fava N, Frangou S, Ionita S, Menegatti E, Pina A (2010) Introducing robotics to teachers and schools: experiences from the TERECoP project. In: Proceedings for constructionism. pp 1–13

  30. Elkin M, Sullivan A, Bers MU (2014) Implementing a robotics curriculum in an early childhood Montessori classroom. J Inf Technol Educ Innov Pract 13:153–169

    Google Scholar 

  31. Karahoca D, Karahoca A, Uzunboylub H (2011) Robotics teaching in primary school education by project based learning for supporting science and technology courses. Procedia Comput Sci 3:1425–1431

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Riedo F, Freire M, Bonani M, Mondada F (2012, May) Involving and training public school teachers in using robotics for education. In: Advanced robotics and its social impacts (ARSO), 2012 IEEE workshop on. IEEE, pp 19–23

  33. Fridin M, Belokopytov M (2014) Acceptance of socially assistive humanoid robot by preschool and elementary school teachers. Comput Hum Behav 33:23–31

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Chevalier M, Riedo F, Mondada F (2016) Pedagogical uses of thymio II: how do teachers perceive educational robots in formal education? IEE Robot Autom Mag 23(2):16–23

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Rusk N, Resnick M, Berg R, Pezalla-Granlund M (2008) New pathways into robotics: strategies for broadening participation. J Sci Educ Technol 17(1):59–69

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. Bruner J, Lucariello J (1989) Monologue as narrative of the world. In Nelson K (ed) Narratives from the crib. pp. 73–97. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Univ. Press

  37. Anderson ML (2003) Embodied cognition: a field guide. Artif Intell 149(1):91–130

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  38. Tobias S, Duffy TM (eds) (2009) Constructivist instruction: success or failure?. Routledge, Abingdon

  39. Hattie JAC (2009) Visible learning: a synthesis of 800+ meta-analyses on achievement. Routledge, Abingdon

    Google Scholar 

  40. Prawat RS (1992) Teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning: a constructivist perspective. Am J Educ 100(3):354–395

    Article  Google Scholar 

  41. Mishra P, Koehler MJ (2006) Technological pedagogical content knowledge: a framework for teacher knowledge. Teach Coll Rec 108(6):1017

    Article  Google Scholar 

  42. Hattie J (2012) Visible learning for teachers: maximizing impact on learning. Routledge, Abingdon

    Book  Google Scholar 

  43. Merrill MD (2002) First principles of instruction. Educ Tech Res Dev 50(3):43–59

    Article  Google Scholar 

  44. Allen WC (2006) Overview and evolution of the ADDIE training system. Adv Dev Hum Resour 8(4):430–441

    Article  Google Scholar 

  45. Calvani A, Menichetti L (2015) Come fare un progetto didattico: gli errori da evitare. Carocci Faber

  46. Bandura A (1977) Self-efficacy: toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychol Rev 84(2):191

    Article  Google Scholar 

  47. Kradolfer S, Dubois S, Riedo F, Mondada F, Fassa F (2014, October) A sociological contribution to understanding the use of robots in schools: the thymio robot. In: International conference on social robotics. Springer, pp 217–228

  48. Gascoine L, Higgins S, Wall K (2017) The assessment of metacognition in children aged 4–16 years: a systematic review. Rev Educ 5(1):3–57

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work was partially funded by the Tuscany Region. The authors would like to thank all the teachers involved in the training course.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Viale Rinaldo Piaggio 34, 56025, Pontedera, Pisa, Italy

    Emanuela Castro, Francesca Cecchi, Pericle Salvini, Massimiliano Valente, Elisa Buselli & Paolo Dario

  2. Department of Educational Science and Psychology, University of Florence, Via Laura, 48, 50121, Florence, Italy

    Laura Menichetti & Antonio Calvani

Authors
  1. Emanuela Castro
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Francesca Cecchi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Pericle Salvini
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Massimiliano Valente
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Elisa Buselli
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Laura Menichetti
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Antonio Calvani
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  8. Paolo Dario
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Francesca Cecchi.

Ethics declarations

Funding:

This study was partially funded by the Tuscany Region.

Conflicts of Interest:

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Castro, E., Cecchi, F., Salvini, P. et al. Design and Impact of a Teacher Training Course, and Attitude Change Concerning Educational Robotics. Int J of Soc Robotics 10, 669–685 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-018-0475-6

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-018-0475-6

Keywords

Search

Navigation