Study of Prospective Teachers’ Visual Reflection on Teaching Preschoolers With Robots

• In Event: Sunday Roundtable Session 11:25 am
  In Roundtable Session: Teachers, Teaching, and Design (Table 5)

Abstract

In early childhood and elementary contexts, computer science is usually taught as block-based coding. We examined the quality of reflection of prospective early childhood education teachers who learned to program robots using block-based code, and its relation to their motivation and other aspects of learning to program. We conducted clustering analysis using study classifications and pre and post-survey motivation variables, and we used multinomial logistic regression to determine which variables significantly predict cluster membership. A key implication is that preservice, early childhood teachers need not have pre-existing computer science interest or even views of the value of coding to be able to learn CS and robotics and be able to thoughtfully and reflectively integrate such into teaching.

Authors

• Brian R. Belland, Pennsylvania State University

• Eunseo Lee, Pennsylvania State University

• Yinqi Zhang, Pennsylvania State University

• Emre Dinç, Pennsylvania State University

• Afaf Baabdullah, King Saud University

• ChanMin Kim, Pennsylvania State University