Pre-service and in-service teachers’ interest, knowledge, and self- confidence in using educational robotics in learning activities

This paper presents a study that aims to analyze the interest, knowledge, problem-solving skills, and self-confidence of the pre-service and in-service teachers in using educational robotics for teaching purposes, in particular, to teach programming and computational thinking in primary and secondary education. In the Portuguese context, it is mandatory to attend a masters in teaching in order to become a teacher in primary and secondary education. Computational Thinking, programming, and robotics have been integrated into the schools’ curriculum in many countries. Accordingly, it is essential to analyze the teachers’ preparation to teach these thematic trends. A descriptive and exploratory quantitative approach was implemented with 49 participants. The results pointed out a positive level of interest, educational robotics knowledge, problem-solving, self-confidence of both pre-service and in-service teachers. It was possible to identify significant correlations in all dimensions, in particular, between “Self-confidence” and “Educational Robotics Knowledge”, and “Problem-solving” and “Interest”. Therefore, it is necessary to promote these dimensions, in an integrated way, in the pre-service and in-service training programs through learning activities with robotics.


Introduction
This paper presents a study developed with pre-service and in-service informatics teachers who are or were attending the master in teaching informatics at the University of Lisbon. In the portuguese context, it is mandatory to attend a master in teaching in order to become a teacher in primary and secondary education. These pre-service teacher training programs are organized in several dimensions, such as specific didactics, general education, scientific area (e.g., mathematics, informatics, sciences, among others), and professional practice initiation. For example, during this program, pre-service informatics teachers learn about education, research methods, curriculum and assessment, and didactics of informatics and start the initiation of teaching with real classes of students.

EDUCAÇÃO & FORMAÇÃO
The master in teaching informatics program aims to prepare pre-service teachers with didactical and pedagogical repertories to teach several informatics subjects that are part of the national curriculum (such as computational thinking and programming, databases, computer networks, hardware, computers architecture, digital systems, and information and communication technologies).
Computational Thinking (CT) has been pointed out as a thematic trend in education, and as an essential skill that all 21st-century citizens should hold (PIEDADE et al., 2019). The development of students' CT skills promotes the improvement of other competencies such as problem-solving, algorithmic thinking, collaboration, and critical thinking. Accordingly, computational thinking and programming have been integrated in the primary and secondary schools' curriculum in many countries around the world Educational Robotics has been referred to in many studies as a didactical approach to teach basic programming concepts and computational thinking, even in early education (BERS et al., 2014;CHALMERS, 2018). Programming robotics and blockbased programming apps saves the students from the difficulties of traditionally complex text-based languages (FRANKLIN et al., 2017).
According to the primary and secondary school curricular guidelines, in one of the informatics didactics courses of the master program, pre-service teachers are involved in This research aimed to analyze the interest, knowledge, problem-solving skills, and self-confidence of the pre-service and in-service teachers in using educational robotics for teaching purposes, in particular, to teach programming and computational thinking in primary and secondary education.
The following research questions were assumed: ▪ Q1. Which levels of interest, knowledge, and self-confidence of the preservice and in-service teachers does educational robotics use in learning activities?
▪ Q2. What is the level of problem-solving skills of both groups?
▪ Q3. Is there a significant correlation between the interest, knowledge, problem-solving, and self-confidence dimensions?
▪ Q4. How is the impact of gender and age in the levels of interest, problemsolving, knowledge, and self-confidence?
▪ Q.5 What is the difference among the levels of interest, problem-solving, knowledge, and self-confidence presented by pre-service and in-service teachers?

Pre-service informatics teachers education
Bologna process -intergovernmental cooperation of 48 European countries in the field of higher education-has changed the initial teacher education frameworks in In the next table, we present the curricular structure of the master degree in Teaching Informatics, created by the University of Lisbon. Finally, in the Introduction to Professional Practice, future teachers are involved in activities of induction to teaching practice in a real classroom context. In each of these curricular units, especially from the second semester of the first year onwards, future teachers begin to develop and apply activities for students in primary and secondary schools, supervised by a University professor and a schoolteacher. At the end of the master degree, students are qualified to be a full computer science teacher in primary and secondary education.

Teachers self-efficacy
The concept of self-efficacy appears widely described and studied in Bandura's social cognitive theory and was presented by the author in 1977 as the idea of "selfdirected mastery", the ability of people to self-orient and actively direct their behavior towards mastery and excellence in personal performance. Self-efficacy is linked to the personal belief in relation to personal skills, or otherwise, the judgment of own ability to put in place the set of actions required to achieve a specific objective, in this way " […] how people behave can often be better predicted by the beliefs they hold about their capabilities than by what they are actually capable of accomplishing" (BANDURA, 1997, p. 21). Self-efficacy appears as a belief, oriented in the future, about the skills that an individual expects to show in the resolution of a certain situation (TSCHANNEN-MORAN; WOOLFOLK HOY; HOY, 1998).
It is a motivational construct based on self-perceived competence that goes far beyond the current level of performance (TSCHANNEN-MORAN; WOOLFOLK HOY, 2007).
Self-efficacy beliefs are functionally associated with real human behaviors (BANDURA, 1997). They present themselves as a powerful predictor of human behavior, providing more reliable information than that provided by the people's knowledge or skills.
According to the author, self-efficacy appears as the psychological construct that most directly and faithfully relates to the individual's behavior. People with a high sense of effectiveness tend to view difficult tasks as challenging and promoting higher levels of mastery, rather than perceiving them as threatening or intimidating, with high levels of interest, involvement, and investment in such activities.
Tschannen-moran, Woolfolk Hoy e Hoy (1998) advocate that the effectiveness of teachers is associated with the ability to successfully design and carry out the teaching tasks required in a given educational context. Schwarzer e Schmitz (2004) state that a teacher with a high sense of self-efficacy presents himself as a proactive teacher, who believes in the existence of the necessary external and internal resources, who takes responsibility for his own professional growth, who focuses on the search for solutions to problems, regardless of the causes that originate them, who choose their paths of action and that creates meaning and sense for their lives by setting ambitious personal goals.
More recent research shows that contextual factors such as teaching resources, support from colleagues, and mediated experiences influence pre-service teachers' self-efficacy

Systematic literature review on educational robotics
Computational thinking and programming has been introduced in the curriculum in many school systems around the world. In the last decade, many international  Another characteristic of these block-based programming is the possibility of programming many tangible objects like robotics, drones, and mobile phones. The use educational robotics, as a pedagogical strategy, has been referred in many studies as a powerful approach to teach and learn to program, to develop CT skill, to develop 21stcentury skills (CHALMERS, 2018; JUŠKEVIČIENĖ; DAGIENÉ, 2018).
To identify relevant studies about using educational robotics to teach programming and computational thinking, a systematic literature review was done by searching in the three relevant databases related to computer science and education (ACM Digital Library, SCOPUS, Web of Science). This search was done between January and February 2020 and had as restrictions: (i) studies written in English; (ii) published between 2010 and 2020; (iii) papers published in indexed journals; and (iv) each paper must present abstract and full text. The terms used for searching were "Computational Thinking AND Robotics" or "Computational Thinking AND Robots" or "Computational Thinking AND Educational Robotics", and 117 papers were obtained. In the second phase were selected papers which contained the following: (i) use of educational robotics as a pedagogical tool; (ii) participants belonging pre-school to K-12 education; (iii) presenting empirical results. After this phase, the total of paper was reduced to 25. In the third phase were selected papers published in Q1 and Q2 (SJR index) journals in the field of computer science, technology, and education. The total of the papers was reduced to 16 (Appendix C).
The results showed that eight studies were developed with elementary school students, three with middle school students, one with preschool students, and four with pre-service teachers. The majority of the studies assumed a quantitative research design (14) and only two a mixed-method design.
Educational Robotics was referred to in many of the studies as an efficient didactical approach or tool to teach basic programming concepts and computational  10 Another relevant aspect discussed in the literature is the contribution of the educational robotics activities to promote the development of 21st-century skills as problem-solving and creativity. Noah and Lee (2020) noticed an exciting results about the of 11-weeks educational activities with 155 Korean elementary school students. The results showed that programming using robotics improved significantly students computational thinking and creativity skills and that creativity was improved more in the girls.
To analyze the effect of age and gender in the development of computational thinking skills through educational robotics activities, Atmazidou and Demetriadis (2016) assessed the skills ok two groups of students with different ages (89 age 15 and 75 age 18). The results suggested that students reach the same level of CT Skills independent of their age or gender. However, the girls need more training time to reach the same skill level compared to the boys. In the opposite Taylor and Baek (2019) reported no significant difference between gender in the robotics performance. Ludi and Reichlmayr (2011) reported the importance of the use of robotics to improve the interest and confidence of visual impairments students in computing activities. The physical characteristic of the robotics could potentialize the learning outcomes of students with some special needs.
Finally, three of the selected papers reported the results of studies developed in pre-service teacher education connected with experiences to prepare futures teachers to teach with robotics. Jaipal-Jamani and Angeli (2017) analyzed the positive effects of robotics on pre-service teachers' self-efficacy, science learning, and computational thinking, three crucial aspects that is important contemplate in future teachers preparation courses. The same importance was reported by Leonard et al. (2018). Comparing inservice and pre-service teachers' computational thinking skills, Günbatar (2019) found significant differences in the skill levels. The in-service teacher revealed high scores in each CT dimensions when comparing with pre-service teachers.
This literature review aimed to discuss the importance of educational robotics as a strategy to teach programming and to promote the students' computational thinking skills as well as the importance of the development of pre-service teachers' skills in these aspects.

Participants
This study involved 49 participants, students, and former students of the Master in Teaching Informatics. The participants were organized in 3 groups: (1)

Instruments and data collection procedures
The data collection process was developed according to a quantitative technique using a self-report scale organized in an online questionnaire to collect data from participants. The self-report scale developed by Jaipal-Jamani & Angeli (2017)  The analysis of the scale's metric quality was done according to the reliability, sensitivity, and factor analysis criteria. A high level of internal consistency was found  The online questionnaire was sent by email to all participants with all relevant information about the study, and the data collection occurred between January and February of 2020. After that, the data was exported to SPSS Statistics v.26 used to the statistical data analysis, report in the next topic.

Results
To analyze the levels of interest, problem-solving, educational robotics knowledge, and self-confidence presented by the participants (Q1 and Q2), a matrix of descriptive scores of each item was constructed (Appendix B). The mean scores observed in each dimension are organized in Table 2

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The analysis of the statistical significance of the correlation between the dimensions (Q3) was made through the non-parametric Spearman's Correlation test, used to analyze ordinal variables, and representing in the following table. The analysis of the Spearman's correlation coefficient revealed a statistically significant correlation between the dimensions (.44 < rho <.76, p<.001). The high level of correlations was found between 'Self-confidence and 'Educational Robotics Knowledge (rho=.76, p<.001) and between 'Problem-solving' and 'Interest' (r=.71, p<.001). A nonsignificant correlation was reported between 'Educational Robotics Knowledge' and 'Problem-solving' dimensions. According to that results, a linear regression model was applied between the dimension with the highest correlation coefficient.
The linear regression of 'Educational Robotics Knowledge' score as the predictor of 'Self-confidence' score reports that the participants 'Educational Robotics Knowledge' can explain 74 % of the variance in 'Problem Solving' score and the regression model predicts a significantly high problem-solving level (F(1,47)=132.43, p<.001; r 2 =.74).
The linear regression of 'Interest' score as the predictor of 'Problem-solving' score suggests that the participants' 'Interest' can explain 55 % of the variance in 'Problemsolving' score and the regression model predicts a significantly high self-confidence level (F(1,47)=57.21, p<.001; r 2 =.55). Results show that each 1 point increase in the 'Interest' score also increases 'Problem-solving' score by .67 (b1=.67, t=3.72, p<.001).
To analyze the gender and age impact (Q4) in the levels of interest, problemsolving, educational robotics knowledge, and Self-confident, a comparative analysis of mean was made using an independent-sample t-test for gender and One-way ANOVA The last research question (Q5) aimed to analyze the differences between the participants' levels in each dimensions scores according to the groups organized with students of first and second years (pre-service teachers) and former students (in-service teachers) of the master in teaching informatics program. Notwithstanding the differences between scores of all dimensions (in particular for self-confidence dimension) (Appendix C), the results of the One-way ANOVA test show that these differences did not have statistical significance.

Discussion and conclusions
Returning to the paper's objective, which was to analyze comparatively the levels of interest, educational robotics knowledge, problem-solving skills, and self-confidence of the pre-service and in-service teachers to use robotics for teaching purposes, positive levels were found in each dimension for both groups.
The results of self-report scale analysis revealed high levels of interest and selfconfidence in using educational robotic as well as high levels of knowledge about robotics and problem-solving skills. The importance of the interest, knowledge, and self-efficacy or self-confidence was highlighted in many studies as relevant factors to promote de use of educational robotics with real classes of students (GÜNBATAR, 2019; JAIPAL-JAMENI; ANGELI, 2017;LEONARD et al., 2018). Only the teachers with strong interest and selfconfidence will able to use robotics to teach programming and computational thinking in their school classes. No significant difference in the level between pre-service and in-service teachers was founded in this study. In the opposite, Günbatar (2019) reported high levels of educational robotics skills of in-service teachers when compared with pre-service teachers.
It was possible to identify significant correlations in all dimensions, in particular, between "Self-confidence" and "Educational Robotics Knowledge", and "Problem-solving" and "Interest". Accordingly, it is necessary to promote these dimensions, in an integrated 15 way, in the pre-service and in-service training programs through learning activities with robotics. The training programs should provide the pedagogical context to involve teachers (pre and in-service) in learning activities to promote their knowledge about robotics and their confidence to use this tool for teaching purposes. Teachers should be challenged with collaborative problem-solving learning activities in order to develop or improve their skills. This study proved that educational robotics knowledge has a significant impact on teachers' self-confidence; the more knowledge teachers have more confidence they are to use robotics to teach programming and computational thinking.
When teachers are involved in the planning, designing, and implementing of learning activities with robotics and thinking about the solutions, they rethink all the possible pedagogic approaches that they learned in theory and transfers the knowledge they learned to new situations and problems.
Finally, the results revealed no significant differences between gender and age of the participants. This is an essential result because different authors signalize gender as a distinctive factor, and the educational robotics activities could help to close the gap between girls and boys skills (ATMAZIDOU; DEMETRIADIS, 2016; NOAH; LEE, 2020).
Additionally, the systematic literature review allowed to identify relevant studies that highlighted the educational robotics as a strong path to promote students' knowledge and skills and the importance of preparation of the pre and in-service to their use in classroom activities.
This research has some methodological limitations. First, the small size of the sample does not permit the results' generalization, and second, the self-report scale does not allow to analyze the effective use of this tool, but rather how interest and confidence teachers have in using it. Although the limitations, a set of relevant results are systematized about pre-service and in-service teachers' levels of interest and selfconfidence to use robotics for educational purposes that need be taken in to account in the teacher training programs. Future studies should explore the real classroom teachers' practices with robotics and the impact on the students' achievements on robotics, programming, and computational thinking. http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4118-397X Invited Assistant Professor and Research at Institute of Education of Lisbon University. PhD in Education in field of Information and Communication Technologies in Education and master in technologies and methodologies in e-learning from University of Lisbon. Professor in postgraduate courses, in particular, in the initial training courses for computer science teachers. Scientific coordinator of the specialization course of technologies and robotics in basic education. Research interest: Technology-enhanced learning, informatic initial teacher training, tangible objects programming, computational thinking, artificial intelligence in education, e-learning and distance learning. Authorship contribution: Developed all research, writing and methodological process. E-mail: jmpiedade@ie.ulisboa.pt