Dra. Seckel-Santis, María

The social, scientific and technological development of recent years has encouraged the incorporation of computational thinking in the school curriculum of various countries progressively, starting from early childhood education. This research aims to characterize future kindergarten teachers’ traits of didactic-mathematical and computational knowledge presented when solving and posing robotics problems. Firstly, aspects of the mathematical and computational knowledge of the participants (97 students of the subject of Didactics of Mathematics of the Degree in Early Childhood Education at a Spanish university) were identified when they solved problems as users of the Blue-Bot didactic robot. Secondly, we analyzed their justifications for reflecting on the design of robotics problems. The results indicate that future teachers present characteristics of didactic mathematical knowledge when solving and designing robotics problems, although errors and am- biguities are evident, especially in the procedures and representations of the programming. These shortcomings significantly influence the didactic suitability of the robotics problems they design. From a future perspective, in the training of future teachers, it is considered relevant to incorporate didactic-mathematical and computational knowledge that allows them to develop logical, spatial and computational thinking.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the reflections of future kindergarten teachers when designing didactic sequences with the use of the bee-bot robot. A qualitative methodological design was followed to achieve this objective, collecting the data through a written record prepared by the participants from collaborative work. A total of 25 future teachers participated, forming six working groups. The data were analyzed with the content analysis technique, considering the criteria of didactic suitability–epistemic, cognitive, interactional, mediational, affective, and ecological–and their respective components. The results suggest that at the moment prior to the design of the didactic sequences, the reflections of the groups of future teachers are related only to some criteria, while, in the design of the proposed teaching and learning process, the units of analysis were related to all six criteria. With the results obtained, it is concluded that a future implementation and observation of the design of didactic sequences by the participants would allow the participants to consider more components of the criteria when reflecting. In addition, it is concluded that training that contemplates the criteria of didactic suitability, would also allow future teachers to deepen their reflections, guiding them with these tools.

Learning about the conceptions used by primary school teachers towards the use of robotics in class is essential as the first step towards its application in the classroom. Therefore, with the purpose of describing the understanding applied when teaching and learning mathematics use educational robots, research was conducted by means of mixed methods using a descriptive design by survey. Such research consisted of closed questions (Likert-type scale from 1 to 5) and open questions, given to 83 primary school teachers who currently teach students in the first years of school (First to Fourth grade) in two Chilean districts. The results showed that in general, there is a positive predisposition towards the addition of robots in the learning and teaching of mathematic processes during the first years of school, even though teachers claim there is a struggle to incorporate robots in their lessons due to the high number of students and the reduced space in their classrooms.