A Child's Intra-Active Hands-On Inquiry With/About Robotic Manipulatives

• In Event: 75.041 - MTCC Roundtable Session 33
  In Roundtable Session: 75.041-13 - Enhancing Young Children's Learning Through Robots and Digital Technology

Abstract

As an interpretive case study, we attempt to explore a 6-year-old boy’s hands-on inquiry about/with robotic manipulatives. This study was situated in an early childhood robotics education program for young children, aged four to seven. Drawing on new materialism (Barad, 2007; Bennett, 2010), the findings indicated (a) the robotic manipulatives actively performed the role of a co-inquirer and contributed to directing the topics and the methods of the child’s inquiry, (b) the child engaged in his inquiry through autotelic and bodily modes, which involved purposeless, repetitive, tacit, and spontaneous actions, and (c) different inquiry events emerged in the constant transformations of assemblages that enabled the child to engage with the evolving, rather than predetermined, meanings of the robotic manipulatives.

Authors

• Sung Eun Jung, University of Arizona

• Kyung Hwa Lee, University of Georgia