Preservice Early Childhood Teachers’ Self-Efficacy & Young Children’s Motivation in Robotics-Integrated STEM Activities

• In Event: Cultural Responsiveness and Inclusivity in Technology-Oriented STEM Education for Young Children and Teachers

Abstract

Drawing on conceptual frameworks on teachers’ self-efficacy (Bers, Seddighin, & Sullivan, 2013; Chen, Huang, & Wu, 2021) and children’s motivation (Ryan & Deci, 2000), this study explores how preservice early childhood teachers and their young Latinx students (aged 5–7) engage in STEM activities through robotics.
The study was conducted in an after-school program at a local community center serving children from economically under-resourced Latinx families in the Southwestern United States. 20 preservice teachers and 26 children participated in this study. In a mixed method design (Creswell & Clark, 2017), we collected four data: 1) teachers’ pre- and post-self-efficacy surveys (Friday Institute for Educational Innovation, 2012), 2) teachers’ pre- and post-reports of children’s motivation by using Learning Behaviors Scales (McDermott, 1999), 3) teachers’ written-reflections over time, and 4) 15.75 hours of video-recorded data.
We conducted dependent samples t-tests to examine changes in the teachers’ self-efficacy in STEM subscales and the children's motivation subscales. For qualitative data analysis, we developed pre-determined codes and then conducted descriptive coding (Saldaña, 2013) via the NVivo software program to analyze the teacher reflections and video data. Next, we compared our initial results and revised the initial codes. Through iterative coding processes, we sorted the codes to identify emerging themes. For the reliability, we adopted Smagorinsky’s (2008) “collaborative coding” (p. 401). We compared the quantitative and qualitative data analyses to cross-verify results (Creswell & Clark, 2017).
Our results showed that the teachers' self-efficacy in STEM significantly increased from the beginning (M = 3.9, SD = 0.7) to the end of the robotics program (M = 4.5, SD = 0.5), t(19) = -7.5, p < .001. In particular, the teachers' self-efficacy in STEM showed significant increases in five subscales: 1) STEM Identity, 2) Cultural Knowledge, 3) Robotics Knowledge and Skills, 4) STEM Teaching Pedagogy, and 5) General Pedagogy. Most teachers explicitly mentioned that their engagement in robotics-integrated STEM activities had increased their confidence in teaching STEM content. The teachers also developed a positive pedagogical belief and attitude toward robotics as age-appropriate technology and STEM content for young children.
On the contrary, our statistical analysis revealed no significant increase in the children's motivation from the beginning (M = 2.6, SD = 0.2) to the end of the semester (M = 2.6, SD = 0.3), t(19) = 0.9, p = 0.3. However, the qualitative data indicated that children had shown cognitive and social persistence with adults and peers in solving emergent STEM problems. Most teachers also reported their observation of the children’s strong motivation and affective attitudes (e.g., pleasure, excitement) toward problem-solving and engineering designing processes. Although the teachers’ reports included some off-task behaviors that deviated from lesson plans, these child-initiated and unplanned inquiries demonstrated the children’s playfulness, agency, and flexibility in their STEM learning.
This study shows the potential of robotics for young children’s STEM learning by attending to their engagement and motivation. The study also highlights the potential of robotics for early childhood teacher education by focusing on teachers’ sense of self-efficacy in teaching STEM content.

Authors

• Sung Eun Jung, University of Arizona

• Maham Khalid, University of Arizona

• Katherine C. Cheng, University of Arizona

• Megan Marguerite Hokama, University of Arizona