Dra. Seckel-Santis, Maria

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.

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.