Learning Scenarios with Robots Leading to Problem-Solving and Mathematics Learning

In the last decade, the use of robots in educational contexts has been gaining an increasing interest and expression from teachers and researchers, and various attempts have been made to introduce robotics in education. With the aim of understanding how the use of robots, as mediating artefacts of learning, contributed to the production of meaning and learning of mathematics and informatics, we created a research project DROIDE II – Robots in Mathematics and Informatics Education. In this chapter, we will describe and analyse two of the six learning scenarios, created and implemented by the DROIDE II project, for hands-on mathematics with robots – ‘Making a Movie’ and ‘Robot Race’. The first one was implemented with two primary school classes working together to write a story and to make a movie in which robots were the characters. Along this process, they learned several mathematical concepts, methods and problem-solving strategies. The second was about learning statistics at middle school through a robot race. Both learning scenarios adopted project work as a methodology. The practice that emerged from the learning scenarios’ implementation led to problem-solving where students negotiated several mathematical meanings and robots structured the way students acted, thought and learned. We will also highlight some features of the design of the learning scenarios that potentiated the learning of mathematics in a technological environment.