Using educational robotics to foster girls’ interest in STEM: A systematic review

With this paper we present the first – to our knowledge – systematic review on how to use Educational Robotics to foster girls’ interest in STEM. This is a research area essential to broadening the participation across the genders in the much-needed STEM workforce, whose size is currently held back by a significant gender disparity. In the review, 13 (quasi-)experimental studies were selected for synthesis, from a total of 1093 results found across multiple search queries applied to six scientific databases. When synthesizing the results and findings from the included studies, four major categories of research interest were identified. On the basis hereof, a list of recommendations, which are readily implementable in most curriculums for both compulsory education and extracurricular activities, was established. The recommendations revolve around: The choice of technology, applied contextualization, approaches to teaching, and gender compositions. In addition, we discuss the current extent of research on the topic, which shows indications of becoming more active in recent years, while likewise discussing the reviews implications for future research directions.

I. Introduction

Worldwide we see a need to increase the size of the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) workforce [1], [2] and consequently STEM and Computational Thinking (CT) [3] have found their way into compulsory education curricula [4], [5]. For this purpose, Educational Robotics has been demonstrated as a feasible way to teach these through a hands-on approach [6]-[8], even from a very young age [9]-[11]. This could be so, because we can easily relate to robots as they are actual, physical entities operating in the same world as us [12]-[14]. Regarding this, we have also seen massive international investments, which have e.g. provided more than one million Danish and British pupils with the micro:bit ER technology [15]-[17].