Unknown: This journal article presents a systematic literature
review about educational practices in emerging technology
K-12 education.
It contributes with a HCI research agenda pointing at
potentials and discussion points to consolidate and mature the
research field.
Our interdisciplinary research team and authors of this article
come from the arts and computer science departments of Aarhus
University Denmark.
We included five types of emerging technologies, internet
of things, artificial intelligence, machine learning,
virtual and augmented reality. The aim of this article is to
provide a state of the art review of emerging technologies
in K-12 education.
We conducted a critical analyses and synthesis of peer reviewed
archival non-archival records published in English between
2010 and 2020. That focused on introducing or teaching emerging
technologies in different educational settings.
To ensure transparency and limit bias in the selection of
literature, we followed the Prisma scoping review guidelines
and flow diagram, additional columns are created for the
deductive analyse categories.
Now looking at the results, the vast majority of records
included for the review were published in the last three
years. Less diversity was found in geographical distribution of
the institutions of first authors, showing a clear over
presentation of Western countries.
The most common target group for learning activities for emerging
technologies are students in secondary education, in
particular grades between 8-10. Very few records specially
addressed very young and under represented target groups. On
average, 34 students participated in a single study.
As for teachers, their role in learning activities for emerging
technologies is fairly limited, but fewer than a third of all
records including teachers in the development, facilitation or
evaluation of learning activities.
More over in service and professional development
programmes important to scale and sustain research led
initiatives are scarce. Although learning objectives tend to lack
operational detail in multiple progressive levels, it is
encouraging that technology specific objectives are often
combined with a range of other objectives.
These include the ethical and society implications of emerging
technologies, design thinking, positive changes in students
attitudes, or a broad range of 21st century or transversal
skills, such as critical thinking, and collaboration.
A humanities perspective for grounding the implications and
design aspects of emerging technologies is generally either
lacking or treated as an afterthought. More holistic
approaches need to be developed which balance technology
specific objectives, with a humanities perspective to
promote more comprehensive understanding and skill sets.
The format and duration of learning activities typically
ranges from a single workshop to a few sessions of one or more
hours. The preferred setting for these activities is formal
education, followed by non formal education, including
after school robotic clubs, science fairs, makerspaces, and
summer schools. To scaffold students learning in these
settings, a wide range of pedagogical strategies are
suggested in the literature.
These are complemented with a range of other pedagogical
strategies in varying combinations such as learner
centred and inquiry based teaching, authenticity and
closeness, tinkering and reflective practice. Remarkable
only 1/5 of the records connected these strategies to
existing corpus of learning theory and often in an ad hoc
manner. A wealth of digital learning tools to introduce
emerging technologies in K-12 students have been developed.
Machine learning tools are typically designed to glass-box
some aspects of the technology by black boxing others.
Graphical user interfaces and block based coding environments
are mostly often used to enable students to develop, train and
test simple machine learning models. But in a few cases,
students engage in a more advanced programming to develop
machine powered applications.
Internet of Things tools are often open source and combine
existing with custom made components and models to enable
students to design and develop Internet of Things solutions.
Augmented reality and virtual reality tools are predominantly
programming tools that do not necessary enabled students to
learn about the technology, with an additional small group of
authoring tools to create augmented reality and virtual
reality game environments. The development of learning tools
for augmented reality and virtual reality. These
characteristics and implications provides opportunities for
future research.
Of the 65 (of 107) records that present original empirical data,
the majority evaluate learning tools and activities often
together. quality criteria to evaluate tools are directed
towards usability, and students perceptions of an interaction
with these tools, but less towards the underlying mechanics
of these tools and how this country with the students
learning. For learning activities quality criteria
include students engagement, collaboration, their learning
experiences and possible shift in attitudes.
A remarkable finding is that only half of the 65 records
include summative assessment of students learning, summative
assessment is narrowed directly to students technology skills
and understanding, leaving out the ethical and societal
implications of emerging technologies.
Based on our extensive mapping of literature, it is evident
that education about emerging technologies in K-12 is not yet
an established research agenda. Rather than mapping reveals
dispersed discussions around different research fields. Our
literature review points to a range of potentials and
discussion points that need to be addressed in order for this
important research field to consolidate mature to address
the identified research gaps.
We contribute with nine trajectories for future research
that involve a more holistic approach to emerging
technologies. For instance, moving beyond the technical
aspects of emerging technologies, for grounding
their characteristics in relation to society, and to
develop cross curricular approaches beyond steam subjects.
Thank you very much for listening to our presentation.
For further details on the study. We invite you to read the
journal article.