Dra. Seckel-Santis, Maria

This article discusses a qualitative case study involving eight mathematics teachers in Brazil. The study aimed to analyze the effectiveness of a training course that combined Lesson Study and Criteria of Didactical Suitability in developing reflective competence in teachers. Lesson Study is a professional development strategy that encourages teachers to collaborate and reflect on their teaching practices, while Criteria of Didactical Suitability is a tool that guides teachers’ reflection. The study aimed to evaluate the usefulness of Criteria of Didactical Suitability in enhancing reflection skills and to assess the participants’ perception of its usefulness. The analysis revealed that participating teachers improved their reflection skills, specifically by utilizing Criteria of Didactical Suitability more effectively in the third phase of the course. However, the study has limitations, such as being conducted virtually and in a specific context. Overall, this study highlights the potential of combining Lesson Study and Criteria of Didactical Suitability in developing reflective competence in teachers. Further research can explore the efficacy of this approach in different contexts.

The recognition that the development of Computational Thinking (CT) has been achieved in the educational systems of different countries implies, in some cases, the challenge of integrating its development into mathematics lessons. Although various proposals address the development of CT in the early years of schooling, educational robotics emerges as an alternative. The Bee-Bot robot has been recognized as an appropriate resource for the development of this type of thinking at an early age. For carrying out this qualitative study 25 articles were selected, based on a systematic research literature review, and analyzed to provide didactic orientation for the integration of CT in mathematics lessons with the use of the Bee-Bot robot (or similar). For this purpose, a thematic analysis method was applied to the selected research articles, focusing on the didactic explanations and suggestions for using educational robots to develop computational thinking. The themes used to analyze the data are according to the six dimensions (epistemic, cognitive, interactional, mediational, affective and ecological) of the didactic suitability proposed by the Ontosemiotic approach. The analysis allowed us to classify twelve didactic orientations according to the dimensions. Four of the twelve orientations refer to the epistemic dimension; three to the cognitive dimension; two are related to the interactional dimension; one to the mediational dimension, one to the affective dimension and another to the ecological dimension.

Computational thinking in the educational environment has awaken a rising interest, having been included as part of the curricula from the very beginnings of education. Programmable robots have become a valuable positive resource in order to succeed in the development of computational thinking, demanding proper training from kindergarten teachers and trainees in order to be able to teach robotic programming. This article has the purpose to 1) identify the frequent errors made by trainee kindergarten teachers when solving a series of robotic problems in a computational thinking module, which develops in the course of Didactics of Mathematics and 2) determine the level of comprehension of the robot concept acquired by the trainees when solving robotics problems. The research developed in a qualitative methodology manner; the data used for this article were collected through the solving of fve robotic problems and an open-ended question that had to be answered by each of the 25 participants individually. The results showed that, in general, the most frequent error appeared in problems in which movements were set in a Euclidean space of two dimensions. That is to say, the problems’ solving required a selection of diferent commands: turn, moving forward and/or backwards. Moreover, more than half of the participants who answered the open-ended question succeeded in owning the robot concept once they had solved the problems.