Educational Robotics for Special Needs Students: Teachers’ Perspectives on Pre-service TrainingEducational Robotics for Special Needs Students: Teachers’ Perspectives on Pre-service Training

Since the introduction of LOGO by Seymour Papert in 1980 and the constructivist theories, after the teaching machines of Skinner, technology, robots and robotics activities have been viewed as effective educational tools. Multiple studies have demonstrated that robotics is a valuable device for special education students too. The present study is part of a particularly novel and challenging trend of research that intends to fill a knowledge gap regarding the perspectives and concerns of learning support teachers on educational robotics. Particularly by questioning teachers who have not received training in the use of educational robotics. In this exploratory study, 125 Italian pre-service learning support teachers were surveyed at the end or during their course specialization to determine their awareness and comprehension of educational robotics usage with students with special needs. The survey reveals that support teachers are not adequately trained to use educational robotics and that they are generally unfamiliar with it and they rarely employ it.

Attitudes towards the Use of Educational Robotics: Exploring Pre-Service and In-Service Early Childhood Teacher Profiles

The introduction of STEM education, and specifically the implementation of educational robotics (ER), has drawn researchers’ attention and has shown that teachers play a crucial role in leading this innovation. The present study concerns in-service and pre-service early childhood teachers, focusing on their perceptions and attitudes about ER use in daily teaching practice. The data were collected via a questionnaire (N = 201) and explored using latent class analysis, which detected distinct clusters/profiles of participants based on their pattern of responses. Two clusters were identified: Cluster1 was relatively homogeneous, including those who share a positive attitude towards ER, while Cluster2 was heterogeneous, comprising participants with inconsistent responses and expressing negative and skeptical thinking. The cluster memberships were associated with external covariates, such as age, years of teaching experience, and variables measuring their technological competencies. The results showed that teaching experience and age were negatively associated with cluster1-membership, while educational robotics knowledge was positively associated. The findings are interpretable, and the implications for education are discussed considering the current literature.

Educational Robotics for children with neurodevelopmental disorders: A systematic review

This paper aims to provide a critical review of the studies dealing with Educational Robotics for children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders. We aimed to investigate whether in the literature there is a sound evidence that activities with robots improve the abilities and performances of children with special needs. This paper explores the methodological aspects as well as the outcomes of the selected studies to provide a clear picture of the state-of-the-art on this topic. After a systematic search in the online database via keyword searches, 15 scientific papers were included in this review. We applied strict selection criteria limiting our review only to papers reporting educational robotics activities with children (from 3 up to 19 years old) with a diagnosis of neurodevelopmental disorders, in which the children had the opportunity to somehow program the behaviours of real robots. The majority of experiences showed improvements in the participants' performance or abilities, their engagement and involvement, communication/interaction with peers, during robotics sessions. Some studies reported mixed results, calling for the need to carefully design the objective and the related activities of each experience.