Problem Identification in Early Childhood Robotics Class

• In Event: 58.064 - STEAM Learning and Teaching in Early Childhood

Abstract

This qualitative case study aims to understand what happens when young children are asked to collaboratively identify a problem and build a robot to solve it. Our thematic coding analysis of video recorded observation data analyzes 1) How do children identify a problem? and 2) How does their problem correspond with what they know about the science and technology of the robot? Drawing on Paulo Freire’s notion of a problem posing model of education, analysis indicates that children’s problem identification was dialogic in nature, 2) constrained by the materials provided to them and 3) offered windows into understanding their lives, suggesting problem identification can be an effective method for learning STEM in personally meaningful ways.

Authors

• Shara Cherniak, University of Georgia

• Kyung Hwa Lee, University of Georgia

• Eunji Cho, University of Georgia

• Sung Eun Jung, University of Arizona