Abstract
The teaching of programming and its basic concepts, even to students with disabilities, has a crucial influence on the development of their cognitive functions and blends class lessons with real life. This chapter describes two activities with educational robotics, performed at a school for special needs. In the activities, the students with physical disabilities could nicely operate a wheelchair without bumping into the classmates and dance with moving hands powerfully while expressing the images of the songs; those with intellectual disabilities could learn words describing directions like right, left, go, and back and clarify how many steps the robot could take to reach the destination. These two classes with education robotics provided them with joyful and skillful activities that were quite different to the daily lessons in the existing subjects, and they would benefit from the opportunity to learn additional life skills that are highly applicable to living within society.
TopIntroduction
Advances in computing have expanded our capacity to solve problems at a scale never imagined, using strategies that have not been available to humankind before now. Students will need to learn and practice new skills in computational thinking (CT) to take full advantage of these revolutionary changes brought about by rapid changes in technology. The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) collaborated on a project to prepare young learners to become computational thinkers who understand how today's digital tools can help solve tomorrow's problems (Computational Thinking, n.d.; CS standards, n.d.). Because both organizations believe that CT is vital for raising levels of achievement, preparing students for global competitiveness, and blending academics with real life, they have made their resources free to all educators (Sykora, 2020).
These 21st-century knowledge and CT skills to solve problems, make sense of information, and know how to gather and evaluate evidence to make decisions are increasingly important. Building students' skills, content knowledge, and fluency in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields are essential to understanding and solving some of the complex challenges of today and tomorrow, and to meet the demands of the dynamic and evolving workforce (U.S. Department of Education, n.d.).
On the other hand, students with disabilities remain underrepresented in STEM fields, and a need exists to help uncover barriers students with disabilities encounter in STEM laboratories, for example. Many people lament the lack of diversity in STEM fields and in teacher education, but many educators continue to “weed out” students from nondominant communities and those who are differently abled (White & Massiha, 2015). Elementary students with disabilities, for example, tend to be tracked away from pursuing advanced academic endeavors. These students are systematically “hidden” from general education and forced into separate classrooms, different programs, and alternative schools. This underrepresentation can lead people to assume students with disabilities are less capable, particularly in STEM-related fields, and the students themselves may begin to believe they are less qualified, feeding a cycle of low expectations and underperformance (Schneiderwind & Johnson, 2020).
STEM education, driven by learner-centered instruction, provides a powerful learning program for students. Most students thrive in active, hands-on, problem-solving classroom environments; this is especially true for students with special needs. Many students with special needs lean toward STEM fields in higher numbers than other students. According to a STEM 3 Academy report (STEM3 Academy, n.d.), about 35% of students on the autism spectrum choose STEM majors in college, which is twice the amount of general population students. However, 50% of these autism spectrum students lose interest in their STEM pursuits or decide that they are irrelevant to their education or future. This is a very important issue, and future design to overcome these troubles is crucial to improve STEM education settings, support students’ continuous motivation, and acquire fruitful outcomes with job recruiting (Jolly, 2016; Myers, 2020). In spite of these existing issues, innovative hiring practices in which many adults with autism, usually having a hard time to finding a job, are being sought out for some technical jobs (Anderson, 2020). This approach could help to convince that including and encouraging students with special disabilities in using technology is a timely need to address.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Students with Disabilities: Every student with a disability has various troubles in learning. In a programming education lesson, however, a concrete object like a robot helps them to acquire their CT and code a program.
School Activity: School activities will lead to the all-round development of students and make them achieve their maximum potential. At the schools for special needs, especially, more use of self-made teaching materials and tools may improve students’ learning. Each student can get good inspiration from classmates and feel that she/he could create something wonderful through moving her/his fingers.
Coding: A block-based coding tool like Scratch is used in teaching coding to the novice at many elementary schools in Japan. In the present lessons, the students used an assembled robot and enabled it to move as they wanted, with Scratch-like block-based coding.
Programming Education: In Japan, in the Course of Study that just started in 2020, a compulsory lesson on programming education is required at all the elementary schools. Most teachers think that the programming education may still not be a clear concept, but it is regarded as being the same as standard CT.
Lesson Plan: A lesson plan is a teacher’s daily guide, and helps teachers be more effective in the classroom. Lesson plans should be made based on the needs and interests of the learners. Lesson objectives, lesson activities and procedures, teacher support, criteria for evaluation for both the unit and each class and so forth might be included.
School for Special Needs: In Japan, there still exist 1,160 separated schools for special needs in the 2021 academic year. Almost half of them is for students with intellectual disabilities. Each lesson is performed under an individual learning plan designed to suit each student’s specific needs.
Course of Study: The learning scope and its order are stipulated in a Course of Study. In Japan, it is renewed almost every 10 years. The Course of Study that started in 2020 requires a compulsory lesson on programming education at all the elementary schools.
Assembled Robot: Assembled educational robot that can be operated with the block-based coding tool, as used in the present activities, which might be suitable for students with moderate and/or severe disabilities.