Abstract:

In recent years, the potential of educational robotics and coding has been highlighted in studies and research on teaching strategies for children with special educational needs. Integrating educational robotics and coding in school activities enables learning based on real-life problem solving as well as the inclusion of children with special educational needs, since these resources have a relevant learning potential by promoting the development of socioemotional and personal skills, key factors in the learning and inclusion processes. However, one of the great difficulties is understanding how teachers recognize the potential of educational resources and their differences, as well as whether they feel prepared to make use of educational robotics and coding in inclusive settings. This study aimed to verify the conceptions about the use of educational robotics and coding in inclusive settings of a group of students in the Information and Communication Technologies and Special Educational Needs curricular unit of the Master’s in Special Education in the cognitive-motor domain in the second semester of the 2021-2022 school year. The relevance of the study lies in the need to train education professionals for the effective integration of robotics and coding activities in educational contexts of inclusion. This is an initial research project with an exploratory interpretive character approach, supported by an assessment of acquired knowledge applied after the class on "Computational Thinking, Robotics, and Coding in Inclusive Learning Contexts". The class consists of 25 students, with 20 having the opportunity to attend the class and 19 responding to the assessment. The results show that most participants recognize the potential of educational robotics and coding in promoting learning contexts with children with special educational needs and are aware of the importance of their continuing professional development and training in this area. From this initial research, which is now exploratory in nature, it is intended to conduct further research that may result in scientific knowledge for future training in educational robotics and coding in inclusive settings.

Keywords:

Educational Robotics, Inclusion, Special Educational Needs, Teacher Training.