Robótica educacional como recurso pedagógico para estudantes com dificuldade de aprendizagem

Abstract

The use of Educational Robotics as a support tool in the teaching and learning process of children with learning difficulties is the investigation core of this dissertation. We try not to distinguish between difficulties caused by disorders that are already well defined in medicine or even by another particular cause. In our literature survey, we identified that there are few studies on this topic. Given the novelty of the topic, we carried out a more in-depth analysis of these and other works, including several issues, not only related to learning difficulties. Our main question to be answered, from then on, was to identify how much and how educational robotics can be an adjunct in the teaching and learning process for these students with difficulties. With this direction in mind, we defined the qualitative-quantitative research methodology to identify the remaining points, where we adopted questionnaires as a data collection instrument. We provide forms with questions for students, teachers, and monitors at schools that have educational robotics activities (public schools) in the municipality of Natal/RN, Brazil. Through the analysis of data obtained from the forms, we observed an increase in the use of robotics in education, in general. However, we also identified that, although students with learning difficulties or disorders are found in educational institutions, they are not completely included in robotics activities. Nonetheless, after compiling and analyzing data, we reached positive results, which verify the possibility of application of educational robotics to improve the learning of these children. We found that the majority of students and a good number of teachers and monitors agree that robotics has managed to improve the ability of students with learning difficulties, especially with transversal content. Regarding how to use the tool, we also noticed some important factors. The first factor is the ease of understanding robotics, brought about by new software and hardware tools developed, which greatly facilitate its use as a supporting tool. We also note that teachers’ interest is another factor that affects the "how", as it has the potential to collaborate in an attempt to improve the issue of learning difficulties. The teacher’s interest improves with the use of these new tools, demystifying robotics for the lay teacher. Furthermore, the existence of complete support systems for its application, open source and free of charge, involving content and tools on the web, in addition to an effective continuing education policy for teachers, have contributed to the tool becoming increasingly more effective, mainly, as highlighted, in content transversal to robotics.