Programming is fundamental to the development of computational thinking, one of the essential skills for the 21st century. Tangible programming can be a powerful ally of this process from an early age, especially if it supports STEM tasks areas and inclusion. These are the pillars of the TangIn project, under which four qualitative case studies were developed with the aim of to evaluate the lesson plans designed within the scope of the project and the potential of its implementation for the development of the mentioned dimensions. The statistical and content analysis which the questionnaires applied to 43 teachers from Portugal, Spain, Bulgaria, and Latvia were submitted to conclude that students were always very committed and motivated during activities and developed specific and transversal skills related to STEM, including the ability to program and value colleagues, what contributed to its inclusion, regardless of sex and socio-economic conditions.
TopIntroduction
Digital technologies play a decisive role in education due to the value recognized to them, since the last decade of last century. Robotics, namely tangible robotic in early ages, seems to be a good approach to digital technologies. In fact, children can discover the world based on their interests and on learning real needs, by meanings of manipulating objects, defining pathways, and learning while role-playing, by the intermediary of tangible robots.
This chapter aims to highlight the contributions and key findings emerged during the pilot study developed in the TangIn project – Promoting inclusion and a STEM curriculum in schools through the use of tangible programming concepts and activities - which involves partners from 7 institutions belonging to 4 European countries - Bulgaria, Spain, Latvia and Portugal (http://www.tangin.eu/).
The main purposes of this Erasmus+ project is to produce and deliver a set of activities and resources to support the effective use of tangible programming tools and concepts in daily classrooms. Also, an in-service primary teacher education program has been developed in order to promote primary teachers’ digital competences within a STEM’ curricular approach. This program should be readable by the scientific community, practitioners (teacher educators, primary teachers), and policy makers and should be adopt-ed in (other) primary teacher education programs (under and post-graduation degrees).
Specifically, this chapter aims to present and discuss the results obtained in several schools of 4 European different countries, after the implementation of structured activities, with a tangible robot – MIGO, related to the development of competencies in the STEM areas, computational thinking, and inclusion (Guerra, Moreira, Loureiro, & Cabrita, 2020).
To develop this study, several phases were implemented, namely a pre-pilot study addressed in Portugal (the project coordinator), a teachers’ training course with a duration of 54 hours (2 ECTS) at the University of Aveiro (Loureiro, Guerra, Cabrita, Moreira, Gonçalves, & Queiroz, 2020). Then a pilot study was integrated in the school’s curriculum followed by several multiplier events in each country to disseminate and exploit the results of the project in educational community.
This chapter mainly reflects the work developed during the pilot study in the four countries and it is structured in four main points: theoretical framework, methodology, results and discussion, and final considerations.