Didactical Design Goes Rogue? Children’s Playful Explorations While Engaged in Scaffolded Coding Activities Supported by Robots

Current society is characterized by rapid development and change, with technology being at the forefront in shaping the future. To accommodate this, it is crucial to equip the next generation with the critical skills and knowledge necessary to navigate in such a world. One way to achieve this is through the introduction and implementation of scaffolded coding activities supported by robots in primary education. In this paper we investigate how coding activities that include educational robots can be used in an educational setting with a class of Danish primary school children, aged 7–8 years old. The study draws from a socio-cultural approach to children’s learning and development, elaborating on the concepts of playfulness as a mediated action, the zone of proximal development, and scaffolding. The research questions posed in the study are: (1) How do primary school children adopt didactical instructions in a coding workshop supported by robots? (2) What kind of interactions unfold while children are engaged in coding activities supported by robots? The unit of analysis is children’s coding activities during an experimental coding-workshop supported by different robots carried out in a laboratory setting at a Danish university. The robots used in the workshop were Beebot/Bluebot, Dash and Ozobot. The results imply that scaffolding strategies such as task instructions and the design of the learning environment need to be closely connected and carefully considered to engage children in meaningful ways.