Educational Robotics for Reducing Early School Leaving from the Perspective of Sustainable Education

Abstract

Early School Leaving (ESL) is a problem for many countries and some have pledged to reduce the number of children leaving school early to below 10{\%} by 2020. Between October 2015 and September 2017, Italy, Greece and Latvia implemented an Erasmus+ project that used robotics to reduce the risk of ESL. The effectiveness of the teaching and learning materials developed during the project and the pedagogical strategies used were examined in groups at high-risk of ESL and in the work of the teachers participating in the project. In this paper, the use of robotics to reduce the risks of early school leaving is analysed from the perspective of sustainable education. Mixed methods were used to evaluate the project, and several tools were developed to gather qualitative and quantitative data. Preliminary evaluation of the project was based on action research principles.