Educational Robotics and adolescents from disadvantaged contexts. A research path on communicative mediation

The paper analyses 7 educational robotics workshops carried out by the University of Milano-Bicocca from February to April 2021 at the «Antonia Vita» Popular School in Monza, as part of the Horizon C4S Project. These activities have been conducted with Coderbot with a maximum of 7 students aged between 13 and 16 years old from socio-culturally disadvantaged environments, many of them with learning disorders and difficulties. This research fits into the theoretical framework of Educational Robotic Applications (ERA: Catlin, Blamires, 2010), mainly focusing on 5 principles that have been identified as significant within our context: embodiment, interaction, engagement, curriculum, and personalization. Specifically, the aim is to analyse in-depth didactic mediation strategies (Rossi, 2016) in school environments that are characterised by socio-linguistic deprivation (Lumbelli, 1992), especially regarding the direction assumed by one or more expert adults (Bozzi, Zecca, 2021; Lumbelli, 1974). This is a field still little explored with respect to this specific age group, and in particular to those adolescents using the so-called «restricted code» (Bernstein, 1971). The workshops have been carried out according to 5 phases: 1) engagement, with the aim of gathering students' representations on the concepts of «science» and «robots»; 2) Game of Science (GoS) with a robo-ethological approach (Datteri, Zecca, 2016), to let students express free scientific observations and explanations and investigate interactions between adults, students and robots; 3) algomotricity or body simulation, i.e. the unplugged phase which precedes coding (Lonati et al., 2015); 4) training of 2 student-tutors on some functionalities of the robot and programming problems; 5) peer tutoring, with a Problem-Based Learning (PBL) approach. All activities have been video-recorded and partially transcribed; the research team is achieving and discussing the first results by leading the analysis in a mixed way, both grounded and using SOFC – Instrument for the Observation of Communicative Functions in the classroom.