| dc.description.abstract | In today’s society, an information and knowledge society, the so-called 21st-century skills are becoming increasingly important. These skills, such as problem-solving, social behaviour and IT, need to be implemented more in primary schools to prepare children for living in this new society. Teaching how to program is a way to implement the 21st-century skills in the school’s curriculum. Some research has already been done on the use of programming lessons using computer programs or robots to teach these skills. In general, robots seem to provoke more social interaction than computer programs. However, the results of these studies are not entirely consistent. This research examined the social interaction between children during programming lessons using either a robot or a computer program. 86 Participants from group 6, 7 and 8 of different primary schools in the Netherlands participated in this research. The age of the participants varied between 9 and 12 years. They have taken a programming lesson in either the robot or the computer condition and were filmed during this lesson. The social interaction was measured afterwards by coding the video images for non-verbal and verbal social behavior. This research revealed no differences between the two conditions, which is not entirely in accordance with current literature. Follow-up research can be focused on whether there will be significant differences when the participants work with the programming lessons for a more intense and longer period of time or when humanoid robots are used. | |
