Teaching Partnerships: Early Childhood and Engineering Students Teaching Math and Science Through Robotics

Journal of Science Education and Technology, Vol. 14, No. 1, March 2005 ( C© 2005)DOI: 10.1007/s10956-005-2734-1

Teaching Partnerships: Early Childhood and EngineeringStudents Teaching Math and Science Through Robotics

Marina U. Bers1,3 and Merredith Portsmore2

This paper presents an innovative approach to introducing pre-service early childhood teach-ers to math, science and technology education. The approach involves the creation of part-nerships between pre-service early childhood and engineering students to conceive, develop,implement and evaluate curriculum in the area of math, science and technology by usingrobotics and the engineering design process. In this paper we first present the theoreticalframework for the creation of these partnerships. We then introduce an experience done atTufts University in which three different forms of partnership models evolved: the collabo-rator’s model, the external consultant’s model and the developer’s model. We also presentdifferent case studies from this experience and finally we conclude with some remarks andobservations for making this work scalable and sustainable in other settings and universities.

KEY WORDS: early childhood; pre-service education; curriculum; robotics; math; science andtechnology.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

The field of early childhood education (Pre-K to2) agrees upon the need of introducing young chil-dren to MSTE (math, science, technology and en-gineering) (Clements, 1999; Seefeldt, 1999). How-ever, the primary foci of professional developmentfor early childhood teachers are on developmentallyappropriate curriculum, emergent literacy, manage-ment strategies, and the importance of play to im-prove social and emotional development. Very fewprofessional development programs focus on math-ematics and science education in early childhood.Most curricula in these areas cover concepts suchas numbers, operations, colors, shapes, the life cy-cle, and food groups, leaving behind foundationalconcepts such as the method of scientific inquiry,problem solving, and number sense. Although early

1Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development, TuftsUniversity, 105 College Avenue, Medford, MA 02155 USA.

2Center for Engineering Educational Outreach, Tufts University,Medford, MA.

3To whom correspondence should be addressed; e-mail: [email protected]

childhood educators advocate helping young chil-dren become little scientists and little mathemati-cians (Chille and Britain, 1997), the reality of theclassroom, the emphasis on literacy, and most impor-tantly, the limitations in the formation of the teachersthemselves in math and science, make it very hardto develop and implement innovative curricula thatspan beyond specific concepts to encompass ways ofthinking and behaving in these disciplines.

The first National Education Goal defined byCongress and the nation’s governors, “All childrenwill come to school ready to learn,” and recentfindings from neuroscience have energized publicsupport for early childhood education and have rec-ognized that roots of later competence are estab-lished long before school age (Bowman, 1999). How-ever, if early childhood teachers are not preparedto meet these new highs standards, and are not per-sonally confident in their own abilities in math andscience, it will be hard to implement the ambitiousprograms recommended by professional associations(Bredekamp and Copple, 1997). For example, ac-cording to the 1997 National Education Goals Re-port (National Education Goals Panel 1997), mostteachers, while knowledgeable about reforms, do not

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60 Bers and Portsmore

exhibit in the classroom many of the behaviors sug-gested by those reforms.

Research has shown that early childhood edu-cators have limited access and positive but temper-ate attitudes to the world of computers (Tsitouridouand Vryzas, 2003; Yildirim, 2000). Exposing teach-ers early on to technology is useful, however it isnot sufficient to affect a change. Many wonderfulteachers, who follow constructivist pedagogy, whenfaced with the challenge of using computers in theclassroom, revert to instructionist ways of teach-ing and learning (Bers et al., 2002). They lack theneeded training and expertise to know how to in-tegrate the technology with a constructivist curricu-lum and methodology. Most early childhood educa-tion programs do not prepare teachers in the areaof technology nor do they offer a vision in whichteachers see themselves as designers of technologi-cally rich curricula, and not merely consumers. Thisis in part due to the lack of support at the begin-ning of their teaching careers through apprentice-ship programs and other kinds of opportunities to in-teract with more experienced teachers. To addressthis problem, the National Commission on Teach-ing and America’s Future (1996) recommended thefunding of new mentoring programs that adhereto new teaching standards for science and math-ematics for early childhood educator (Copley andPadron, 1999)

In this paper we claim that in order to effectivelyproduce change in teachers’ approaches to math andscience education, it needs to start in their forma-tive years. Although wonderful things can happen ifteachers in the beginning of their careers are pairedwith mentors and provided with support, it is mostlikely that these beginner teachers will be mostlyconsumed by the everyday dynamics and challengesof being in a classroom and will have little mentalor physical time to allocate to learning a new disci-pline and a new way of teaching about it. We suggestthat the likelihood of improving success fundamen-tally increases if new programs and models are es-tablished in the pre-service years, when teachers areforming themselves. For this purpose, we present apartnership model in which pre-service early child-hood teachers are paired up with engineering stu-dents to develop, implement and evaluate curriculain the areas of math, science and technology. Theuniqueness of the model is that it uses robotics as afundamental teaching tool for developing and imple-menting curriculum that integrates the content areasof math, science and technology.

ROBOTIC MANIPULATIVES

Since the 1800s, when Montessori and Frobeldeveloped their “manipulatives” or “gifts,” there hasbeen a strong emphasis on using tangible materi-als to help young children to engage in active in-quiry by manipulating concrete objects to exploreabstract concepts. Today most of the early child-hood settings are populated with Cuisenaire Rods,Pattern Blocks and other manipulatives carefully de-signed to help children build and experiment, andat the same time, develop a deeper understand-ing of mathematical concepts such as number, size,and shape (Brosterman, 1997). More recently, butin the same spirit, “digital manipulatives” (such asprogrammable building bricks and communicatingbeads) have been created to expand the range of con-cepts that children can explore (Resnick, 1998).

It is within this tradition that robotics presentsa wonderful opportunity to introduce children tothe world of technology. Modern robotic construc-tion kits provide opportunities for children to designand build interactive artifacts using materials fromthe world of engineering, such as gears, motors andsensors, and to engage in active enquiry by creat-ing playful experiences (Bers et al., 2002). They alsoprovide an open-ended environment for teachers todevelop innovative curriculum that integrates tech-nology with different content areas.

Thirty states include technology education intheir educational frameworks (Newberry, 2001);Massachusetts is leading the nation in declaringthat technology and engineering are as impor-tant to the curriculum as science, social studies,and other key subjects. The Massachusetts Scienceand Technology/Engineering Curriculum Frame-work (Massachusetts Department of Education,2001) mandates the teaching of technology and en-gineering for all students in grades PreK-12.

Engineering education offers an excellent plat-form for project-based learning (Resnick et al., 2000),that can motivate students to study math and scienceby illustrating relevant applications of theoreticalprinciples in everyday contexts and promoting designprocesses including iteration and testing of alterna-tives in problem-solving. It also encompasses hands-on construction that can promote three-dimensionalthinking and visualization, building students’ tech-nological literacy, which has become a componentof basic literacy (Miaoulis, 2001; National Academyof Engineering & National Research Council, 2002;Roth, 1998; Sadler et al., 2000). Engineering offers

Future Educators and Engineers Designing Curriculum and Robots 61

design-based activities which engage students inlearning by applying concepts, skills and strategies tosolve real-world problems that are relevant, episte-mologically and personally meaningful (Papert, 1980;Resnick et al., 1996). It provides a wonderful oppor-tunity to integrate different areas of the curriculum,such as math and science, with the humanities andthe social sciences (Benenson, 2001) and to motivatestudents to engage in learning math and science con-cepts, even when they identify themselves as “notgood at” or “not interested in” this (Bers and Urrea,2000).

Robotics is a rich tool for engaging teachersand young children in MSTE by providing oppor-tunities for the active design of meaningful projectsto explore and play with new concepts and waysof thinking in a constructivist way. These projectscan combine manipulative materials they are familiarwith, such as traditional Lego blocks, with new ones,such as the LEGO Mindstorms programmable brick(Martin et al., 2000) and the ROBOLAB program-ming language (Portsmore, 1999). However, very fewteachers have the experience and skills to conductthese kinds of activities. In the best cases, they knowhow to use some computer applications, but haven’tdeveloped true technological fluency to be able tolearn, on their own, a new program, open-ended andsophisticated as to enable them and their studentsto program and design meaningful projects to meettheir curricular needs.

This paper presents a methodology for teachingfuture teachers to integrate MSTE in the classroomby describing the experience of forming partnershipsbetween engineering students and pre-service earlychildhood educators. In the next sections the paperdescribes the courses, the technology used and theway in which partnerships were formed. Later on, wedescribe both successful and unsuccessful learningexperiences by presenting case studies. At the end,we evaluate the project both from the point of viewof the early childhood pre-service educators and theengineering students. Finally we draw conclusions aswell as present recommendations for extending thesepartnerships in other settings in a sustainable andscalable way.

COURSES DESCRIPTIONS

The formation of partnerships between pre-service early childhood educators and engineeringstudents involved the collaboration of both authors,

in charge of developing the curriculum for and teach-ing the following courses: CD 173 “Curriculum forYoung Children: Math, Science and Technology,” arequired course for students seeking certification inthe department of Child Development at Tufts Uni-versity and EN 10 “Prototyping Home Robots,” anintroductory robotics class for engineering students.

CURRICULUM FOR YOUNG CHILDREN:MATH, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

The required course CD 173 “Curriculum forYoung Children: Math, Science and Technology”came into existence in 2002, from the need of in-troducing early childhood teachers to theoretical,conceptual and technical aspects of math, scienceand technology education. In this context, student–teachers learn not only by doing, but also by design-ing new curriculum and new technologies and by test-ing them out in a classroom with close supervisionfrom the faculty.

Students become technologically fluent by be-ing exposed to learning diverse programming envi-ronments well-suited to engage young children inlearning about math and problem solving, such asLogo (Clements and Sarana, 1993), techniques forcritically evaluating educational software, and usesof technologies for science education in early child-hood. Pre-service teachers also become designers oftheir own technologically rich curriculum in the areasof math and science by using the LEGO Mindstormsrobotic construction kit and become fluent with thecreation of websites by having to create an on-lineportfolio documenting their experiences throughoutthe course.

CD173’s curriculum is based on the four tenetsof the constructionist philosophy of learning whichstarted in the 60’s with the Logo group directed bySeymour Papert, based first at the Artificial Intelli-gence laboratory at MIT and later at the MIT MediaLaboratory. These four tenets have been previouslydescribed by Bers (Bers et al., 2002):

1. The belief in the constructionist approach toeducation. This implies the need of setting up(computational) environments to help chil-dren and teachers learn by doing, by activeinquiry and by playing with the (computa-tional) materials around them in order to de-sign and make meaningful projects to sharewith a community.


2. The importance of objects for supporting thedevelopment of concrete ways of thinkingand learning about abstract phenomena. It isin this context that the computer (and laterrobotics), as a powerful tool to design, createand manipulate objects both in the real andthe virtual world, acquired a salient role in thevision of the Logo group.

3. The notion that powerful ideas empower theindividual. They afford new ways of think-ing, new ways of putting knowledge to use,and new ways of making personal and epis-temological connections with other domainsof knowledge (Papert, 2000).

4. The premium of self-reflection. The bestlearning experiences happen when peopleare encouraged to explore their own think-ing process and their intellectual and emo-tional relationship to knowledge, as well asthe personal history that affects the learningexperience.

Students in CD173 engage in all four aspectsdescribed above: they learn by doing and by de-signing their own meaningful (curriculum) projects;they develop a robotic artifact, evaluate and improveit in an iterative process based on criteria estab-lished according their learning and teaching goals;they develop curriculum that integrates the use ofthe robotic artifact to help make concrete an abstractmathematical or scientific powerful idea, they imple-ment the curriculum in their classroom experiences,and they engage in self-reflection by creating on-lineportfolios.

The premise of the course is that if pre-serviceteachers need to be educated to integrate technol-ogy into the curriculum, to develop technological flu-ency, and to see themselves as agents of change inthe way computers are introduced in early childhoodprograms in a constructionist way, they first need toexperience it themselves. Teaching them computerskills or theoretical classes on philosophical or peda-gogical approaches to the use computers in the class-room is not enough. They need to engage in a “learn-ing by design” experience.

Previous experiences teaching CD173 showedthat just one semester was a short time for pre-serviceteachers to develop the technological skills (and evenmore important, the vision of how the technologycould be used in an innovative way) and at the sametime to develop and implement a new curriculum forintegrating MSTE in the early childhood classroom.

The idea of forming partnerships with engineeringstudents came as a way to solve some of these ob-stacles without putting aside any of the goals of thecourse.

PROTOTYPING HOME ROBOTS

At Tufts, all freshmen engineering students arerequired to take a half credit course each semesterof their first year designed to give them a taste of“real” engineering so that they can understand theneed to take the numerous math and science coursesthat dominate their first two years. The courses rangefrom learning heat transfer through designing bak-ing pans for cakes, to learning chemical engineeringthrough the design of a microbrewery.

Prototyping Home Robots (EN 10) is a halfcredit course that gives students a hands-on introduc-tion to robotics. Students design and build their ownrobots from LEGO Mindstorms materials (LEGORCX and ROBOLAB software). Lectures in theclass focus on building and programming skills, basicrobotics history and terminology, introductory con-trol theory, sensors and analog/digital conversions,and the design process. Each week during lab ses-sion students compete in a challenge. The studentswork in teams of two or three on challenges. Chal-lenges range from simply building a robot to escapefrom a box to creating a network of robots that trans-port a lime from one end of the room to the otherwhile traversing a series of obstacles. Teams receiveone grade based on how well the robot they createdas a group completed the assigned task.

The course always has a waiting list and isgenerally well received by the students. Students typ-ically do well in the course, though they sometimesstruggle with time management, team work, andsome of the math involved with lecture topics. Thecollaboration with the pre-service early childhoodteachers (CD 173) was added to EN 10 as a means ofintroducing engineering students to communicationskills with a non-technical audience. In addition,we hoped to expose the engineering students tothe issues of implementing hands-on projects in theclassroom so that they would gain a better under-standing of K-12 education. Tufts has the mission toincrease citizenship among its undergraduates and,towards this end, several initiatives are aimed at in-creasing the connection between engineers enteringthe workforce and K-12 education (Portsmore et al.,2003; Dunfey et al., 2003).


Fig. 1. LEGO technic pieces.

As part of the EN 10 course, groups of two tothree engineering students were formed and eachgroup was asked to select from a list of pre-serviceearly childhood teachers’ curriculum projects cre-ated in CD173 the one that they wanted to work on.The EN 10 students were told that they were ex-pected to meet with their pre-service teachers part-ners and work on the designed curriculum for a pe-riod of 6–8 h. The EN 10 students were not gradedon the quality of the product they created but on thewrite-up of the experience that they were requiredto submit at the end of the semester. This includeddocumentation of their experience, pictures of theirprojects, and analysis of the process (what worked,what didn’t work, what do you think the studentslearned).

THE ROBOTICS TECHNOLOGY: ROBOLABAND THE LEGO MINDSTORMS KIT

The “LEGO Mindstorms for Schools” kits arethe primary construction toolset for the two courses.The toolset is composed of 3 main components—Lego pieces, the LEGO RCX, and the ROBOLABsoftware. The LEGO pieces in the “LEGO Mind-storms for Schools” are from the LEGO Technicline (Fig. 1). This line includes the standard LEGOpieces most people are familiar with including bricks,beams, and plates. In addition, it has a range of en-gineering elements including motors, sensors, gears,cams, pulleys, and axles (Fig. 1).

The LEGO RCX is a LEGO brick with an em-bedded microprocessor (Fig. 2). The RCX has threeoutputs for controlling motors and lights and threeinputs for gathering data.

To use the RCX in a robotic creation it mustbe programmed as to when to turn motors onand off, when to collect information, etc. Multiple

environments for programming the RCX haveemerged. The one used in courses at Tufts is entitledROBOLAB and was developed via a partnership be-tween Tufts University, National Instruments, andLEGO Education. ROBOLAB provides a graphicalway to program the RCX on both PC and Mac plat-forms. Powered by National Instrument’s LabVIEW,ROBOLAB allows users to program by connectingicons that represent commands. ROBOLAB has atiered interface with multiple levels to allow differententry points for students of different ages and abili-ties. The lower levels entitled Pilot (Fig. 3), allowschildren as young as four to program while the higherlevel entitled Inventor has been used in elementaryschool through college.

At the highest level (Inventor–Fig. 4), ROBO-LAB allows users to control all the capabilitiesof the RCX and develop sophisticated roboticalgorithms.

Fig. 2. The RCX.


Fig. 3. A simple pilot level program to drive a car forward for 4 s.

FORMATION OF PARTNERSHIPS:EXPERT & EDUCATION CONNECTIONS

The formation of connections between expertsin math, science and engineering and educators isnot a new idea. Industries that rely heavily ona workforce with math, science, and engineeringknowledge are significant supporters of K-12 educa-tion. Many have generous grant programs, supportand sponsor existing programs (FIRST, Engineer’s

Week, Explorer Scouts, etc.), and encourage employ-ees to volunteer to work with students in the lo-cal community as mentors or tutors. Several com-panies, like Lockheed Martin (2004), Intel (2004),Rocketdyne (2004) and National Instruments (2004),have developed programs that help K-12 teachersto learn more about math, science, and engineer-ing through courses and summer workshops. Na-tional Instruments also provides year round class-room support via employee volunteers to teachers

Fig. 4. Advanced Inventor programs are structured similarly to flow charts.


who participate in DTEACH summer workshops(sponsored in part by National Instruments). TechCoprs (2003), a national non profit, provides simi-lar support by pairing technical volunteers with K-12students and/or classrooms.

The National Science Foundation also has astrong commitment to placing experts in the class-room through its GK-12 program. The GK-12 pro-gram provides tuition waivers and stipends to grad-uate students fellows pursuing advanced degrees inscience, math, or engineering in exchange for the stu-dents spending 15 h per week in K-12 classrooms.There are 118 GK-12 sites at universities and col-leges spread across 41 states. The program estimatesthat between 2000 and 2004, 993 graduate studentshave been involved helping to reach 1195 K-12 teach-ers (National Science Foundation, 2004). Individualsites have reported the partnership as having a pos-itive impact on the teachers and students as well asthe graduate fellows (Lyons et al., 2003; Dunfey et al.,2003; Llewellyn et al., 2002).

The quantity and success (though there are lim-ited reports) to date indicate that this model is a use-ful way of supporting education and providing citi-zenship opportunities to those with technical skills.However, while many undergraduates in technicalfields volunteer on their own time in school and af-ter school settings, this type of partnership has notbeen replicated at the college level as part of requiredcoursework. Starting these type of partnerships ear-lier has the potential to help pre-service teachersdevelop skills and confidence and give those withtechnical background an opportunity to work witheducators to become more fully engaged civic citi-zens and understand the education system and chal-lenges in our country.

PARTNERSHIPS: PRE-SERVICE TEACHERSAND ENGINEERING STUDENTS

The requirement for students in both coursesCD173 and EN10 was to form partnerships and tocontact each other. We did not specify any ways inwhich partnerships should evolve or partners worktogether. The goal of having this flexible approachwas to observe what models would evolve and to elu-cidate the pros and cons of each model so to laterpropose a scalable and sustainable approach for thismethodology of teaching. We observed three differ-ent ways in which partnerships formed and, based onthe role assumed by the engineering students, we la-beled them as the following models:

Developer’s Model

In this technical outsourcing model, pre-serviceteachers developed the curriculum with no inputfrom the engineering students and then handed outthe technical implementation to the engineers. Pre-service teachers were not familiar with the innerworking of the resulting robotic artifact and onlyknew how to operate it, but not how to fix or adapt it.Pre-service teachers assumed that everything on thetechnical realm would be done for them and there-fore did not take any responsibility in understandingor participating in the robotic development process.For example, a very experienced teacher taking theclass to strengthen his knowledge about math, sci-ence and technology complained “my particular part-ners were not that on the ball, wasted time, and reallyhad to be pushed. What they came up with was actu-ally very clever and powerful, but because they hadn’ttested it adequately (didn’t have a working prototypewhen they promised) the project really did not succeedas we envisioned.” In the mind of this teacher, it wasthe job of the engineering students to do it all, withrespect to implementing and testing the technology,and his job to actually take the project to the class-room. In his conceptualization of the division of laborbetween educators and engineering students, this stu-dent completely forgot that his own reason for tak-ing the course was to develop a better understandingof technology. This was commonly observed in pre-service teachers who initially claimed that their maingoal for taking the course was to “learn more abouttechnology,” but who after being exposed to it, didn’twant to invest the time and effort needed.

External Consultant’ Mode

In this mode, pre-service teachers developedthe curriculum with minimal, but some, input fromthe engineering students and worked with the engi-neers to craft basic robotic artifact that the engineerswould further develop into a complex mechanism. Inthis model, the engineering students were sometimespresent in the classrooms in which their robotic toolswere used by the young students, but not always.According to pre-service teachers, this partnershipmodel was successful. A young woman expressedin her evaluation: “it allowed me to think creativelyabout how to integrate the robotics into my curricu-lum without the anxiety of knowing I had to make itall by myself.” As another student pointed out it was


a good experience because having to communicate tothe engineers “exactly what I needed and wanted fromthem forced me to engage in a very precise mode ofcommunication,” which is sometimes used in writingtechnical specifications and technical documents butit is not frequently used by humanities or educationstudents. One of the most successful cases within thismodel, was a pre-service teacher who conceived acurriculum unit, as well as a robotic artifact, to enableher young first graders to collect and analyze datagathered by a light sensor embedded in a robotic car.Although the engineering students were not involvedin the design of the curriculum unit, they played amajor role in helping this pre-service teacher not onlyto design the robot but also to consult with her re-garding ways in which robotics could be used for datacollection purposes.

Collaborators Model

With this model, a close collaboration was es-tablished between the pre-service teachers and theengineering students in which both the curriculumand the technology were co-developed. Within thismodel, the engineers were also partners in the imple-mentation of the curriculum in the school by servingas co-teachers. This proved to be the most success-ful, time consuming and difficult model of collabo-ration for both pre-service and engineering students.A pre-service student working with kindergartnerswho collaborated with the engineering students tohelp the children themselves to design, build and pro-gram robotic cars reflected on her evaluation: “Weneeded more time with the engineering students to dis-cuss possibilities, plan curriculum, try out ideas andthen successfully use them in the classroom. I am usedto working on a team, so I was not comfortable plan-ning a piece of my curriculum and then handing it overto someone else to design. I wanted all three of us tobe involved in the planning, design and implementa-tion process. I liked the idea of working with studentswith different backgrounds, unfortunately I did notget the same feeling from them at the beginning, theywere not expecting to work with me during all stagesof the project. They wanted to know what I neededso they could make it for me, it took several meet-ings with them to have them understand why I wantedto be there for the whole process and eventually weended up on the same page.” These students endedup with the design of a clever curriculum unit inwhich children first wrote a letter to the engineering

students asking them to design a Lego robot car tosolve a specific problem in their kindergarten class-room. The engineering students sent them back aletter with technical specifications, written at a levelthat kindergartners would be to be able to under-stand, with a basic already built car that needed tobe finished by the young children. At this point theengineering students came into the classroom andhelped the children, and the pre-service teacher, toexplore how to best complete the car and program itsbehavior.

From these three spontaneous models in whichpartnerships evolved, 27% of the resulting curricu-lum projects were in the Developer’s model, 46%were in the External Consultants model, and the fi-nal 27% on the Collaborators model. For studentsin both the child development and the engineeringdepartments, the collaborator’s model proved to bemost effective, but also the most time consuming.It involved a major commitment but also returnedthe highest benefits. The External Consultants modelwas the most frequently occurring model as it seemedto allow both sides to utilize their existing knowledgemost efficiently and minimize the time commitment.

Within these projects and partnerships, beyondthe particular goals of the CD173 course, child devel-opment students learned how to communicate withengineers in a precise way, and how to collaboratewith people from a very different discipline who maybring a different way of approaching problem solv-ing. Engineers developed communication skills fordefining a project and developing a solution for a nontechnical audience. They also negotiated issues oftime management, and division of labor. Both groupsreported developing strategies for working in a team,iterating through the design process, and balancingdesign requirements (the trade off of functionality vs.reliability).

CASE STUDIES

In the following sections, we provide case stud-ies for each of the three partnerships models pre-sented earlier. The case studies were selected be-cause they show the learning experiences of bothchild development and engineering students and re-flect the main characteristics that we have identifiedfor each partnership model. They also provide an in-sight into the complex technologically rich curricu-lum designed by early childhood students seekingcertification.


Fig. 5. Car on number line.

COLLABORATOR’S MODEL:ADDITION AND SUBTRACTION

Josh and Ace, two freshmen engineering stu-dents, worked with Laura, a pre-service teacher in afirst grade classroom developing and implementingher curriculum in an urban setting. Laura was tryingto teacher her young students the concept of addi-tion and subtraction. She wanted the engineering stu-dents to help her create a visual and tangible repre-sentation for the concept for the children to interactwith. After meeting, the group decided that Josh andAce would build cars for students that would travelup or down a number line based (Fig. 5) on student’sinputs.

The cars would have two inputs (touch sensors)where the first grade students could enter numbersby pressing a touch sensor multiple times (Fig. 6).The cars would have a third touch sensor that wouldserve as the “equals sign” to signal the robot to addthe first two inputs together and initiate movementup or down the number line. For example if the but-ton under the blue block on the car was pressed twotimes and the button under the red block was pressedthree times, when the third button on the back of thevehicle was pressed the car would travel to the num-ber 5 on the number line.

During the design process, the engineering stu-dents reported a collaborative relationship with theirpartner, where she pointed out issues that wouldcome up in the classroom and features that wouldhelp her young students learn.

She asked that we implement sound so that the chil-dren would be receiving auditory feedback when

they entered a number and each time a line/numberwas crossed. With auditory feedback they wouldnot accidentally miss-hit the touch sensors withoutknowing it. By beeping after each line, the childwould be able to keep track of the numbers enteredand their sum. Laura also suggested that we limit thenumbers to be equal or less than 10. If this constraintwas not added, a student could repeatedly hit thetouch sensor upwards toward 50 times and the carwould never stop.

The challenge of the curriculum unit designedby Laura and her partners was to use a new technol-ogy to make the concepts of addition and subtrac-tion “tangible.” On the one hand, these concepts aredifficult for young children to grasp but quite simplefor the engineers to understand. However, buildingand programming cars to demonstrate addition andsubtraction was not trivial. The engineering studentsneeded to design a vehicle that was robust enough forfirst graders to use. They also needed to make the in-terface for using it easy to understand for young stu-dents. Their program also needed to account for dif-ferent ways the students might interact with the car.Josh and Ace spent much time refining their conceptand working to improve the reliability and accuracyof their vehicle. They added reinforcements to theirvehicle, color-coded the buttons, and developed so-phisticated programming algorithms to prevent first-grade students from entering number combinationsthe vehicle was unable to demonstrate. The projectwas equal in time and scope to the more advancedchallenges in the EN 10 course because it actuallyhad to be used by children and hence needed to berobust and account for different interactions.

Fig. 6. Close-up of number car. The yellow buttons under the redand blue blocks were used to enter the two numbers to be addedtogether.


The evaluation papers of the engineering stu-dents were positive as they showed a sense of accom-plishment. They also indicated they enjoyed the edu-cation issues involved in the design of their project(such as design considerations, developing and im-plementing curriculum and engaging in close collab-oration with a pre-service teacher) and engaging in areal engineering design process.

I was really impressed at how well our projectworked out. . . . We learned throughout going overthe lesson plans about the different ways in whichaddition is taught and in that sense we learned quitea bit about the educational process. I really likedhow we were doing what real engineers have to do.We had to design a product, then market it, convinceLaura that it was the correct thing for her lessonplans and finally actually build that product. Thatwas the most fun part of the project for me—the con-cept that I was actually doing a complete engineer-ing project from beginning to end.

From the perspective of the child developmentstudent, the project was also very successful becauseshe was able to design an addition and subtractioncurriculum unit that incorporated the use of newtechnologies in an innovative and engaging way. Inher final paper she wrote:

This experience has made me want to include tech-nology such as the RCX in every unit I create in thefuture. Unfortunately, I am also aware that I wouldhave not been able to create the program for theRCX and build each car without the help of the en-gineers. The process was extremely time consuming,especially since I wanted to use eight RCXs. If I amnot able to incorporate RCXs in the same way dueto time, I hope to incorporate the use of simple RCXcars to teach other concepts such as programmingand attempt to integrate them into other curriculumareas.

EXTERNAL CONSULTANTS MODEL:SIMON SAYS . . . PATTERNS

Allison, a child development student, workedwith an advanced engineering student (the Teach-ing Assistant for the EN 10 course) on her project.She had developed three different lessons to pro-mote the discovery of patterns and to increase stu-dents’ level of understanding of this mathematicalconcept. She began with a lesson introducing thestructure, predictability and commonality of patternsin the world around. She then continued with a lessonduring which the children applied their knowledge ofpatterns to numbers by using manipulative materials.

Fig. 7. Simon could move each of his limbs and was programmedwith five different patterns.

Finally she extended this by providing a technologi-cal environment, a gingerbread robot named Simon,in which children were given the opportunity to phys-ically act out and describe patterns to each other andto consider similarities and differences between dif-ferent patterns. Simon would move different parts ofits body in varying ways to create a number of pat-terned sequences that the kids would then be able toact out. Through meeting with the engineering stu-dent she learned more about the Robolab program,and decided that the robot would move both its armsand legs in various four or five movement sequences.

Allison was not able to participate in the ac-tual design process of Simon (Fig. 7), and only cor-responded via e-mail with the engineering student,who built the robot in 3 h and then used Robolabto program the sequence to govern the movement ofeach limb. Allison was able to describe the technicaldetails of the building and the programming done bythe engineering students, but wasn’t able to fully un-derstand it as to be able to modify it.

When Allison used Simon in the classroom theactivity evolved fairly closely to what she had initiallyexpected. But she also discovered that children wereinterested not only in the patterns of movement ofSimon, but also on the different parts of the robot


and how the gears and rubber bands worked togetherto get the body parts to move. After the activity, Al-lison reflected in her paper “The children were inter-ested in learning about gears and the functioning oftechnology, which helped to motivate them as they en-gaged in the activity. For this activity, the children didnot take part in the engineering design or program-ming, however, each child did have a chance to takecharge of controlling the robot’s movements, some-thing that the children seemed to really enjoy. If I wereto do this project again I might have the children par-ticipate more in the design process.”

This observation lead her to express that shewould also like to be more involved in the designprocess next time. Although her project was suc-cessful and matched her original plan, Allison feltthat if she had collaborated more closely with theengineering student, and invited him into her class-room, she would have been able to branch her cur-riculum to satisfy the children’s curiosity and to divedeeper into more sophisticated technological con-cepts that children wanted to know about. From theengineering student’s perspective Simon was an in-teresting challenge. “It was a very cool project be-cause it was technically challenging for me to createarms and legs that looked and moved realistically. I’vebuilt a number of high end projects and I was sur-prised how drawn everyone was to this one. Every-one who saw me building it stopped to check it out.”He also expressed that the challenge was well formedso he had little need to be in close contact with hispartner although it could have been helpful. “I real-ized that I shouldn’t have Simon do anything the kidscouldn’t do—like have both feet off the floor at thesame time. That is one of those specifications I couldhave forgotten since I haven’t worked with kids thatmuch.”

DEVELOPER’S MODEL: THE TORTOISEAND THE HARE

Edith is a pre-service teacher doing herpracticum experience in a combined kindergartenand first grade classroom. She decided to create a cur-riculum unit “The Tortoise and the Hare” to teachstudents how to quickly problem solve and to un-derstand that when problem-solving there are oftenmany ways to get to the same solution. Her curricu-lum was composed of three distinct activities that en-couraged children to find multiple ways to add to thesame number. Two main components of the project

were to integrate stories from Aesop’s Fables intothe math curriculum and to utilize Lego Robots toconduct a Tortoise and the Hare race.There were twoprimary goals for this activity. The first goal was to in-tegrate technology into the classroom through theuse of Robolab and Lego programmable bricks withthe help of the engineering students. The second wasfor the children to understand that there are multi-ple ways to add to the same number. She planned theunit on her own and initially conceived the role ofthe Engineering students as partners “who will helpme bring my ideas about the tortoise and the hare racecome to life. The Tortoise will be programmed to walka certain amount of steps to reach the finish line. Eachtime he takes a step something noticeable will happenthat will let the children know what a step looks orsounds like (i.e., a beep, a flash of light). The Hare willbe programmed to move the same amount of steps asthe Tortoise. But, the Hare will always take one nap inthe middle of the race causing the number to be splitinto two. So, five would be split into four and one, twoand three, three and two, one and four. The nap willbe signified by some sort of sound or light. While theHare is taking a nap the children will have to figureout how many steps the Hare needs to go to catch upwith the Tortoise.”

Edith planned to begin the activity by tellingchildren the fable and later she was hoping to ex-plain how the technology worked and to conduct thecounting challenge (e.g. how many steps the Hareneeds to go after his nap to catch up to the Tortoise?).She was planning to give each child five unifix cubesto keep in front of him or her to help them with theirtask by using the cubes or their fingers to figure outhow many more steps the Hare needs to take. (Fig. 8)

Unfortunately the implementation of this ac-tivity in the classroom looked very different fromthis initial plan. Edith attributes this “to a numberof ‘technical difficulties’ in the construction of theTortoise and the Hare. The carpeted floors in my class-room turned out to be the cause of one problem be-cause the Tortoise could only walk on smooth sur-faces. The Hare, on the other hand, was so loud whenit moved on hard surfaces that it could only be used onthe carpeting or it would distract the other children atwork. The quiet volume of the beeps signifying stepsalso posed a problem in a busy K/1 classroom.” How-ever all of these problems could have been avoidedhad Edith been involved in the full cycle of the de-sign/implementation process of the robotic projectand had explained to the engineering students (whowere clueless about the particular atmosphere of


Fig. 8. The Tortoise and the Hare.

an early childhood classroom) the context in whichthese robots were going to be used.

The lack of communication between both andthe developer model of partnership that only in-volved engineers in the technical implementationphase of the project was detrimental to the successof the project as the pre-service teacher had origi-nally envisioned it. “I found it challenging to get myideas across to the engineering students despite what Ithought to be a clear explanation of my design ideasgoals. It seemed difficult for them to imagine how theactivity was going to be run in the classroom and whatI would need the robots to do in order for them to beuseful. I ultimately was not able to get the Tortoise andthe Hare to do what I wanted them to for the math ac-tivity to be successful and meet my goals.” The engi-neers echoed this communication problem but froma different perspective “Working on this project wasa crash course in communicating complex ideas in asimple way. Edith, for example, had not had muchexperience with ROBOLAB, so it took quite a bitof explaining and devising new ways to explain whyI was having trouble figuring out the distance beepproblem”

Although there were problems with the robotsand the planned activity did not succeed, Edith wasable to turn this into a positive learning experience.

“Just as the children engaged in problem solving,so did I. This experience has helped me to modify

curriculum plans quickly and to work with the ma-terials that I have available to me. Although it wasfrustrating and disappointing that the technology didnot work as I hoped it would, I challenged myself togive children a meaningful learning experience with-out following my lesson plan.” This skill, the abilityto quickly accommodate and change plans, is oneof the aspects that most pre-service teachers fearmost about using technology. However, since tech-nology doesn’t always work as expected, overcom-ing this fear is one of the first requirements for teach-ers to successfully integrate new technologies in thecurriculum.

EVALUATING PARTNERSHIPS

Most of the evaluations of the partnership expe-rience for both the pre-service and the engineeringstudents were positive. On the pre-service teachersevaluations, two main ideas were recurrent: (1) earlychildhood educators found themselves challenged bythe need to communicate with others in a differ-ent field of study. Most of the evaluations resonatewith the following statement made by a pre-serviceteacher: “I had to do a lot of translating for them[the engineering students]; and they had to do thesame with me”. And, (2) early childhood educatorswere able to push further the notion of developingtechnologically rich curriculum to explore deep ideasin math and science trough the use of robotics. Forexample, a child development student who created


a robot with a camera on top so it would providenew perspectives on things around the classroom (thecar’s point of view) and enable young children to dis-cuss spatial relations concepts, wrote in her evalua-tion: “The technology component of this curriculumproject, was by far the component about which I wasmost uncertain. It was also, by far, the most success-ful activity I did with the children. . . . I am not techno-logically fluent and I approach technology with bothapprehension and low expectations. Before I took thisclass, I was also thoroughly unconvinced of the powerof technology as an educational tool. Though the classreadings and discussion, I became convinced of its ef-ficacy. In fact, by the time I had to design the project, Ifelt I knew enough about it to tell a truly powerful useof educational technology from a merely interesting orfun one.”

On the engineering side, the project was in-tended to improve the engineering students’ com-munication skills and understanding of K-12 educa-tion. However, it also provided most students withan authentic engineering design challenge — com-plete with prototyping, redesigning, and marketingof their creation to a non-technical consumer. This isnearly impossible to reproduce inside the engineer-ing classroom as the instructor is not a real consumerand generally has a technical background. Nearly allthe students’ papers indicated how much they likedengaging in an authentic design process where theytruly were the experts. Having real consumers, how-ever, introduced a lot of variability and equity issues.The projects were not all on the same level of diffi-culty and the child development students had differ-ent levels of interest and demands in the project.

Although forming partnerships proved to besuccessful, some of the problems arose because pre-service teachers complained that engineering stu-dents were not used to having to get ready on time fora “real project” that would be happening with “realpeople” in a young classroom. Advanced preparationis one of the distinctive features that separates a goodfrom a bad teacher, but engineering students werenot aware of this. Therefore, when pre-service teach-ers engaged in explaining this out, it provided an op-portunity for engineering student to learn about theresponsibilities involved in being an educator.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE WORK

The pilot project presented in this paper pro-vided insight into ways to improve the concept

of forming partnerships between pre-service earlychildhood educators and engineering students.

Project Requirements

The success of the Collaborator partnershipsmodel indicate that the project should be presentedto students as more of a joint project where studentsfrom each discipline are expected to contribute to theclassroom curriculum and the technology—i.e. stu-dents from each setting are designers of the technol-ogy and the curriculum. Defining the project as a mu-tual undertaking will help to promote the two typesof models (External Consultant and Collaborative)that were most beneficial to both sets of students interms of creating a final project that they were bothinvolved in.

Time

The projects were completed completely outsideof class, which made it difficult for students to findtime to meet. First and second year engineering stu-dents have very different schedules than third andfourth year students involved in a pre-service teach-ing program. Having additional class periods dedi-cated to the project would help to alleviate this is-sue. The project should also be introduced earlier inthe semester. With delays and other problems, someprojects were being done at the same time as the finalproject (for the engineers) or the final paper (for thechild development students). This added a level ofstress that created discontent amongst the students.Ideally, the classes would take place in the same timeblock to facilitate collaboration.

Structure

During the pilot the instructors did not meetwith groups or intervene in any way unless requestedto. This worked well for some groups but manygroups could have benefited from more discussionswith instructors about how to proceed with theirproject. The younger engineering students, in par-ticular, needed more guidance about how to workwith other students and how to keep their project onschedule. Meetings between groups and instructorswould also help to address some of the personalityand communication conflicts that arose. Additional“checkpoints” should also be implemented—such as


a draft of the curriculum concept that the instructorcould review or a basic working prototype.

CONCLUSIONS

The model of using partnerships has enormouspotential for sustainability as the courses are re-quired parts of their respective departments andoffered on an annual basis. This ensures an amplesupply of students and departmental support andfunding for instructors and teaching assistants. Thesustainability factors also would allow the course tobe replicated at other institutions which have en-gineering and teacher preparation programs as thestart-up costs are low. While the LEGO materialsused in these partnerships are a costly investment,the model could be used with less expensive ma-terials (paper clips, tape, paper) or with computersoftware.

The less successful projects helped to indicatehow these partnerships need to be structured andmonitored in the future. While the students involvedin these projects were less enthusiastic about theirresults, their results clearly illustrated issues thatface many educators implementing technology in theclassroom, such as understanding and access to tech-nology, support in the classroom, etc.

The successful projects in this pilot demonstratethe power of the partnership between students in dif-ferent disciplines. The projects created by these part-nerships could not have been designed, created andtested in real classrooms within the constraints of acollege course by students from either class on theirown. The blending of skills made it possible for cut-ting edge projects to be developed and implementedin a relatively short period of time. This allowed thepre-service early childhood teachers to see the poten-tial offered by technology and what they would needto know to continue using it. They also were ableto design with technology with the safety net of ex-perts (the engineering students). From the engineers’perspective, they were engaged in a real engineeringexperience with actual end-users. They had to meetthe demands of their “clients” and convey technicalknowledge and limitations. They also gained insightinto the educational system and the issues involvedin incorporating technology into the classroom. Theoverwhelmingly positive comments from students in-volved in successful projects and the quality of theirwork indicate that the partnerships have tremendouspotential to offer learning experiences to both sets ofstudents.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks to the course teaching assistantsLaura Boudreau (CD 173) and Paul Nangeroni (EN10) for all their help running these two courses.

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Teaching Partnerships: Early Childhood and Engineering Students Teaching Math and Science Through Robotics