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Marine plastic pollution in kindergarten as a means of engaging toddlers with STEM education and educational robotics
Summary
This paper explores using marine plastic pollution as a topic to engage preschool children with STEM education and robotics through experiential learning. Environmental topics like plastic pollution can serve as motivating contexts for early science and technology education.
In recent years, education has increasingly focused on children's acquisition of digital skills and abilities, which leads to the need to create new educational methodologies capable of engaging students in computational thinking activities. The research interest of this paper focuses on how preschool children can be more involved in STEM and educational robotics through authentically experiential learning on the topic of marine plastic pollution. It examines toddler engagement through an integrated STEM scenario using the programmable robot Bee-Bot and encourages children to solve problems in many possible ways, assessing the strengthening of their necessary skills. The teaching intervention took place during the 2021-22 school year in a Kindergarten in the city of Ioannina. During the planning and implementation phase of the program, action research and field study are applied, while the sociocultural approach to teaching natural sciences, educational robotics, new technologies, engineering, the arts and mathematics. The research framework is completed with the evaluation process and the students disseminating the project learning outcomes.