A Survey on Teacher's Cognition for the Improvement of Robotics Education in Public Education

摘要

The purpose of this study is to improve robotics education in public education. This study was conducted with 157 secondary school teachers regardless of their gender, age and majors. The results are as follows: First, 68.2% of the respondents (81.2% of the STEM(Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics)-related teachers) thought that robotics education should be included in public education because it will be a very important area in the future. Second, 73.3% of respondents (89.3% of the STEM-related teachers) agreed that robotics education will be worth teaching as a regular subject. The most important reason was that they thought the robots would be an excellent tool to initiate their class participation and increase their study motivation. Third, the results from this survey showed that the technology teachers would be the best suitable instructors for robotics education. Lastly, teachers felt a great deal of burden to teach robotics although they thought robotics education was necessary. In order to implement robotics education in public school, teachers think it is necessary to take professional training. In addition, teachers should be supported with the reduction in their workload along with sufficient fundings, educational robots such as LEGO MINDSTORMS, and newly designed teaching materials.