ABSTRACT
Since the 1970s, robots have been used as part of a constructionist approach to education. In this, learners build and program robots to form an understanding of the world and technical concepts through active experience. The robots are thus tools and the learners work on them to achieve the learning outcomes. The use of robots as a tool in education has its origin in computer programming education and developments there tend to feed into how robots are programmed. Computer programming education focuses mainly on the teaching of computational thinking: the systemic division and solving of problems through a number of steps and processes which could be carried out by a computer. Grassroots initiatives such as the EU Code week, in which thousands of activities are organized throughout Europe to bring children into contact with coding, are supported by the European Commission and industry partners.
