Developing an Interactive Environment through the Teaching of Mathematics with Small Robots

Abstract

The article is the product of the study “Development of innovative resources to improve logical-mathematical skills in primary school, through educational robotics”, developed during the 2019 school year in three public schools in the province of Chiriquí, Republic of Panama. The teaching-learning process in students is influenced by aspects inside and outside the classroom, since not all schools have the necessary resources to deliver content or teaching material. The general objective of the project is to design, develop and implement educational robotics to improve logical-mathematical skills aimed at preschool and first grade students in public schools, using programmable educational robots. For this, a set of resources and activities were developed to improve the logical-mathematical skills of the initial stages, in public schools, obtaining significant results. Playful activities favor the teaching-learning process. Considering the analysis of the results made on the data obtained through the applied collection instruments, it can be argued that in general terms the values indicate that the students obtained a favorable level of performance in the different challenges proposed. The project has allowed the academic community to have an application of great value that allows teaching about the conservation of natural sites. The project only covers the area of mathematics in preschool and first grade.

The transfer effects of computational thinking: A systematic review with meta‐analysis and qualitative synthesis

“…The studies focusing on the transfer effects of CT in mathematics investigated various skills and knowledge, including general mathematical competence (García‐Perales & Palomares‐Ruiz, 2020; Sung et al, 2017), problem‐solving skills (Fanchamps et al, 2021; Kaufmann & Stenseth, 2020; Miller, 2019; Muñoz et al, 2020; Ng & Cui, 2020; Psycharis & Kallia, 2017; Shumway et al, 2021; Wang et al, 2022), concepts (Cui & Ng, 2021; Rodríguez‐Martínez et al, 2020; Sáez‐López et al, 2019), habits of mind (Pei et al, 2018), and specific thinking skills (Barrón‐Estrada et al, 2022; Città et al, 2019; Kim et al, 2021; Lockwood, 2022; Lockwood & De Chenne, 2020; Nogueira et al, 2022; Palmér, 2017; Sung & Black, 2020).…”

“…engineering (n = 9) and the humanities (n = 7).The studies focusing on the transfer effects of CT in mathematics investigated various skills and knowledge, including general mathematical competence(García-Perales & Palomares-Ruiz, 2020;Sung et al, 2017), problem-solving skills(Fanchamps et al, 2021;Kaufmann & Stenseth, 2020;Miller, 2019;Muñoz et al, 2020; Ng & T A B L E 2…”

Integration of computational thinking in K-12 mathematics education: a systematic review on CT-based mathematics instruction and student learning

“…The cross-grade activities used among these studies are afforded by the spiral mathematics curricula across K-12 education, such as the recurrent arithmetic topics in kindergarten and lower primary education (Sung et al, 2017), the relevant transition from arithmetic to algebraic thinking in the middle school grades , and the interrelated 2D geometry topics across secondary education (Wilkerson-Jerde, 2014). In addition, these studies commonly provided an open-ended constructionist learning environment which involved the students creating CT artefacts with little direct instruction (Papert & Harel, 1991), during which the students could explore and develop non-prescribed learning outcomes in both mathematics and CT. As argued by Muñoz et al (2020) and , CT-based mathematics activities are suitable for cross-grade teaching and learning, because they support non-traditional curricula learning, with the former study showing that mathematics learning could take on a range of domains with little prior mathematics knowledge necessary, and the latter study concluding that the developmental sequence of learning mathematics maybe altered by the use of computational tools. In particular, highlights the conceptual connection between skip counting and geometric sequences, which takes roughly 7 years to learn in traditional curricula; but in the Scratch programming environment, it is as straightforward as replacing the symbol for operation.…”

“…In response, we aim to generate further understanding from the reviewed empirical studies on this question. First, the reviewed studies suggest that the physicality of tangible programming is supportive to the learning of number, measurement, geometric shapes and spatial concepts and skills (Jurado et al, 2020;Muñoz et al, 2020;Shumway et al, 2021). Sáez-López et al ( 2019) further recommended the use of block-based programming and robots for learning number concepts in CTbased mathematics activities, saying "there are many advantages to teaching computational concepts, coordinates, values and integer numbers as motivation for the student to learn how to operate the robot.…”

“…Regarding CT-based mathematics instruction, we identified several common instructional approaches, and we further sub-categorized them by task structure (i.e., the organization of learning tasks and learning processes): problem-based learning (Gilchrist et al, 2021;Kaufmann & Stenseth, 2021;, inquiry-based learning (Gilchrist et al, 2021;Pei et al, 2018), and project-based learning (Sinclair & Patterson, 2018). While reviewing the studies, we also note other learning modes, such as embodied learning (Sung et al, 2017), gamebased learning (Grizioti & Kynigos, 2021), and pair-or group-learning (Echeverría et al, 2019;Grizioti & Kynigos, 2021;Kaufmann & Stenseth, 2021;Muñoz et al, 2020). In the present review, we focus on analyzing the characteristics of problem-based learning, project-based learning, and inquiry-based learning, since they are more dominant in the literature.…”