Wenhao Yu^a, Yiyang You^b, Feng-Kuang Chiang^a,c

Impact of participation in the Educational Robotics Competition from the parent’s viewpoint: a mixed method

Contact Author: Feng-Kuang Chiang (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

^aDepartment of Educational Technology, School of Education, Shanghai Normal University, 200234, China

^bInstitute of Higher Education, Fudan University, 200433, China

^cCenter for Future Education, School of Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 200240, China

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

Educational robots have been regarded as an effective learning tool in STEM education. Educational robotics competitions have gained great popularity because they make kids learn by doing and give kids a chance to improve STEM knowledge and competencies by designing and teamwork. Parental involvement in STEM education has been confirmed to positively influence the kid's studies (Grolnick & Slowiaczek,1994). This study investigates the impact of participation in the educational robotics competition (World Robot Olympaid, WRO) from the parent's viewpoint.

Janette Bobis, Maggie Feng

Engaging K –2 students in problem solving STEM tasks

Contact Author: Janette Bobis (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Sydney School of Education and Social Work, The University of Sydney, Sydney 2006, Australia

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

The type of STEM tasks we provide, and the way we introduce them to students in their first few years of school, can influence their long-term engagement and learning of STEM disciplines (Hannula, 2019). Despite evidence indicating that many teachers are reluctant to use cognitively challenging tasks, research is emerging to indicate that students prefer and enjoy solving such tasks (Russo & Minas, 2020). As part of a large project involving early years teachers and their students implementing sequences of challenging tasks, we aimed to: (1) investigate young students’ engagement in, and preferences for challenging, problem-solving mathematics tasks; and (2) explore students’ reasons for their engagement and preferences for tasks of different challenge levels.