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A young child’s dialogic appropriation of programmable robots
Author(s) -
Jung Sung Eun,
Lee Kyunghwa
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
british journal of educational technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.79
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1467-8535
pISSN - 0007-1013
DOI - 10.1111/bjet.13012
Subject(s) - dialogic , appropriation , robot , agency (philosophy) , dialog box , perspective (graphical) , robotics , meaning (existential) , sociology , computer science , artificial intelligence , human–computer interaction , pedagogy , epistemology , world wide web , philosophy , social science
This qualitative case study explores a 6‐year‐old boy’s dialogic appropriation of programmable robots. The study was conducted in two robotics education programs for children aged four to seven. Drawing on Bakhtin’s (1981) notion of appropriation, we found that the focal child actively engaged with the programmable robots by (1) transforming the given features of the robots, (2) hybridizing the programming practice with the ordinary practices of his peer culture and (3) constructing his own perspective on the agency of robots and the meaning of programming. We argue that the ways in which the focal child engaged with the programmable robots went beyond mere adoption of the robots but rather took the form of dialog.