The Acquisition of Computational Thinking through Mentoring

An Exploratory Study

Bibliographic Data

ID22046752
AuthorsNúria Cervera (Universitat de València), Pascual D Diago (0000-0002-0900-8098, Universitat de València, corresponding author), Lara Orcos (0000-0001-8138-551X, Universidad Internacional De La Rioja), Dionisio F Yáñez (0000-0002-6206-1971, Universitat de València)
Year2020
Volume10
Issue8
Pages202
Publication date2020-08-07
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEducation Sciences (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2227-7102 • E-ISSN: 2227-7102
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/educsci10080202
OpenAlexW3048333939
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited28

Educational robotics are commonly present in kindergarten and primary school classrooms, particularly Bee-bot. Its ease of use allows the introduction of computer programming to young children in educational contexts from a science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) perspective. Despite this rise, there are still few investigations that collect evidence on the effectiveness of robotic interventions. Although mentoring experiences with robotics had been carried out in educational contexts, this work explores their effect on the acquisition of computational thinking skills through mentoring. Participants from the second grade, aged seven through eight years, were exposed to two sessions of robotics with Bee-bot in order to promote hands-on experimentation. The sessions were conducted by nine students of the fourth grade (the mentors), aged 10 to 11 years. A descriptive case-study methodology was employed for the analysis of the mentoring intervention. The effect of the mentoring experience was assessed in terms of motivation and computational thinking skills. Mixed quantitative and qualitative results show two important findings: (i) Mentoring is a powerful tool to be considered for improvement of the motivation and cooperation of students in their teaching–learning process, and (ii) computational thinking skills can be acquired by second-grade students through a mentoring process

Computational Thinking · Creativity · Critical thinking · Exploratory research · Mathematics education · Robot · Robotics · Computer Science · Educational Research and Pedagogy · Experimental Learning in Engineering · Psychology · Teaching and Learning Programming · Artificial Intelligence

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