There is a growing presence of technology in the daily lives of elementary school students, with a recent exponential rise due to the constraints of remote teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is important to understand how the education system can contribute to helping students develop the required skills for technological careers, without neglecting its obligation to create conditions that allow them to acquire transversal skills and to enable them to exercise full citizenship. The integration of Educational Robotics and block programming activities in collaborative learning environments promotes the development of computational thinking and other ICT skills, as well as critical thinking, social skills, and problem solving. This paper presents a theoretical proposal of a didactic sequence for the introduction to educational robotics and programming with Scratch Jr. It is composed of three learning scenarios, designed for elementary school teaching. Its main goal is to create conditions that favour the development of computational thinking in a collaborative learning environment. With increasing complexity and degree of difficulty, all the tasks root from a common problem: How can we create an algorithm that programs the robot/sprite to reach a predetermined position?

The proper integration of technology in teaching and learning processes must consider the role of teachers and students, as well as the design of tasks and the context in which they are implemented. Teachers’ perceived self-efficacy significantly influences their willingness to integrate educational robotics (ER) into their practice, so initial teacher training should provide opportunities for teachers to participate in structured activities that integrate ER. In this study, a class of pre-service teachers from an initial teacher training programme were provided with their first contact with an ER platform through the use of a simulator. We present the design process of a student exploration guide and teacher guide, developed over three iterative cycles of implementation, assessment and redesign. The analysis of the data collected allowed for improvements in the design of the tasks, the graphic component of the student exploration guide, and more precise indications for the teacher’s actions. The main contribution of this study is the chain orchestration between the simulator, student exploration guide and teacher guide, which allowed pre-service teachers to solve a set of challenges of increasing complexity, thereby progressively decreasing their difficulties and contributing to an adequate integration of ER in their future teaching practices.

This paper seeks to understand the impact of a training program on 19 pre-service primary school teachers’ perceptions towards educational robotics (ER). The training program is based on a reflective process of design and implementation of a learning scenario during the practicum, using a pre-experimental design. Quantitative data were collected through a questionnaire applied at three moments of the intervention: pre-intervention, post-intervention 1 (19 weeks after), and post-intervention 2 (37 weeks after). The results show that the features of the proposed training program positively influenced the pre-service teachers’ (PST) perceptions towards ER. Experiencing curricular integration of ER and participation in a reflective process of learning scenario design positively influenced their perceptions in post-intervention 1. After experiencing the integration of ER in the practicum class, PST adjusted their positive perceptions in post-intervention 2. PST also displayed a decrease in neutrality in their perceptions in post-intervention 1 and post-intervention 2. Given the limited sample, it’s not possible to generalize these results, however they have implications for initial teacher training programs dedicated to technology integration. PST must be allowed to confront their preconceived perceptions of integrating technology into teaching and learning processes with the reflective process of designing and implementing a lesson plan that integrates technology during the practicum.

The scarcity of studies dedicated to the integration of educational robotics (ER) in teaching mathematical content, and the discomfort of teachers when integrating ER in their teaching practices make it pertinent to understand the development of the didactic knowledge of mathematics necessary to integrate ER in mathematics teaching practices during initial teacher training. This qualitative and interpretive study identifies the knowledge of the didactic dimension from the didactic-mathematical knowledge conceptual framework that is mobilized by pre-service teachers (PST) during the implementation of mathematical tasks that integrate ER during the practicum. Through content analysis of the data collected on the PST’s performance, we mapped the occurrence and co-occurrence based on the components of the didactic suitability criteria. From the results, we highlight: (i) the existence of a relationship between the mathematical knowledge needed to teach, knowledge of the mathematics curriculum, and knowledge of ER and how its integration in the teaching process can influence the learning process and (ii) the positive contribution of the implementation in the practicum of mathematical tasks that promote robot manipulation/programming at the same time as the exploration of the mathematical content for the development of the participants’ didactic knowledge of mathematics. A practical implication of our results is that these features should be part of future work dedicated to integrating ER in mathematics teaching practices of PST, aiming to assess their value in initial teacher training programs.

The integration of virtual manipulatives in classroom practices facilitates student learning processes. For this, the teacher must understand how to support students in establishing mathematical connections between the manipulation and their interpretations of the representations. We present a learning scenario that integrates the use of virtual manipulatives in mathematical modelling tasks. It was designed and implemented during initial teacher training, with the aim of helping a group of first-year elementary school students to overcome difficulties identified in their comprehension of the meaning of subtraction. The research, following the principles of design-based research, included three distinct moments: an individual written pre-test, an intervention phase with six micro-cycles, and an individual written post-test. The analysis of the collected data—audio, screen recordings, and written productions—allowed us to identify the most influential structural characteristics of the learning scenario: mathematical communication, collaborative learning, self-regulation, and co-regulation of learning. Our results suggest that differentiated instruction, minimal guidance, and scaffolding played an important role in the support provided by the pre-service teacher to students in the mathematical modelling activities that integrated virtual manipulatives.