A study on the application of robotic programming to promote logical and critical thinking in mathematics education

摘要

Logic lays the foundation of Mathematics and the development of Mathematics is dependent on critical thinking. So it is important that school mathematics helps students develop their logical and critical thinking ability for both mathematics learning and problem solving in general. MINDSTORMS, a LEGO based programming activity kit, is an effective teaching and learning tool that can be used to enhance logical and critical thinking in students. This study focused on measuring the growth of students' ability to think logically and critically when they used MINDSTORMS activities to learn programming. In addition, we investigated how the students' logical and critical thinking changed from the MINDSTORMS learning experience. The study confirmed that the programming activities using MINDSTORMS help to enhance logical and critical thinking in students. The students attitude about logical and critical thinking became more positive and the activities helped to engage students to think logically and critically. This type of programming activities should be valuable in mathematics education and it should be included in a general mathematics curriculum.