Robotics Education in STEM Units: Breaking Down Barriers in Rural Multigrade Schools

Abstract

We report a novel proposal for reducing the digital divide in rural multigrade schools, incorporating knowledge of robotics with a STEM approach to simultaneously promote curricular learning in mathematics and science in several school grades. We used an exploratory qualitative methodology to implement the proposal with 12 multigrade rural students. We explored the contribution of the approaches to the promotion of curricular learning in mathematics and science and the perceptions of using robotics to learn mathematics and science. As data collection techniques, we conducted focus groups and semi-structured interviews with the participants and analyzed their responses thematically. We concluded that the proposal could contribute to meeting the challenges of multigrade teaching. Our findings suggest that the proposal would simultaneously promote the development of curricular learning in mathematics and science in several school grades, offering an alternative for addressing various topics with different degrees of depth.