This study intends to present a different way of introducing IT into the classroom, applied in practice in an educational environment, in classes of primary level students (around 12 to 18 years old), and their schools. Although it is not an educational methodology, the proposed didactics, which use IT through robotics or programming, aim to be non-invasive. Besides, it intends not to cause an abrupt cultural change and reduce the reactivity in using IT resources in classrooms. It works on connecting the IT resources-Robotics/Programming with the students' out-of-class worldview and their personal and collective perspectives.
Instead of suddenly inserting IT into the classroom, we try to get students to "let their imagination run wild". They are instigated to give a new way : their way : to discover and experience new concepts using IT resources. Observing what they know or would like to know about IT using robotics and programming was essential. Such approach can be helpful for students with different educational needs (Erdem, ; Olakanmi et al., ).
Particularly, this view explores the idea that robotics (and its coupled programs) is part of the POP world of these students. It is seen in cartoons (from The Jetsons to Steven Universe), movies, heroes or villains of comic books, and music. Even those living in adverse socioeconomic conditions have heard of or been aware of some hero robots, such as Transformers. Thanks to media marketing, these students know about robots and the programs that control them.
One concept applied was to seek the worldview of these students regarding the world of IT. For this application, it was important to make the students present their common ways and visions of what they understand about IT. Before introducing an IT resource, they may consider what IT can offer them in the classroom. It enables them to build their perspective about this universe.
For this study, Gestaltism (Greenwood, ) was perceived as knowledge to help build new ways to discover, experiment, or create educational content. It adds different worldviews about a theme (in this case, IT). It helped to capture the development of learning environments more connected to the universe of these students. The Gestalt Approach strand values subjectivity, uniqueness, responsibility, and experience. It focuses on the perception of existence in front of a holistic environment. It was not the objective of the study to propose a hermetic methodology to apply and verify perceptions of the developed projects.
The Gestalt approach was chosen not to be bound by closed "liturgies" for an educational method. It was used to obtain the students' perceptions and worldviews. As the focus of this approach is on form, participation, and the sum of perceptions, unformatted conversations within the classroom were used to work on the development of educational resources with robotics. It can be seen as equivalent to a qualitative approach for this kind of didactics.
This way of capturing these perceptions comes from the students and teachers involved in the development processes of the new IT resources. They valued spontaneity so that it was possible to scrutinize the scope, influence, and curiosity regarding robotics and IT, from their point of view, without a strictly academic view. An attempt was made to shape these spontaneous insights into the topic by collecting these informal observations.
This research environment focused on a set of schools in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) in classes from 5th to 9th grades (de Praga Baiao & Batista, ). It has been ongoing research since 2013. One of the authors has worked in these teaching units, facilitating information collection and the application's design.
The formatting of what was observed followed one of the maxims of Gestaltism, which states that the parts' total union makes a fundamental difference from a simple sum. By building this new form, it was possible to introduce these students to the vision of IT with robotics and programming. Thus, the product, created and driven by the students' perceptions, became a standard component in the classroom and a friendly pedagogical resource created, admitted, and planned by them, reducing reactivities.
The idea is to verify how much the Gestalt approach can help produce educational resources associated with IT. As this study deals with creative actions, the proposal uses the IT area that most deals with creations that use imagination and that can be materialized: robotics.
Monsores et al. show an example of the experience of using the gestalt approach to construct educational resources using IT principles. It is only a part of the biggest educational project that uses robotic, gestalt approach and programming to production, by the own students, educational resources.
This study shows the application of this approach to building IT-based teaching resources. It is separated into an introduction, an overview of Gestaltism, robotics, and programming, a review of case studies of the application of the Gestalt approach in other educational situations, and the application of the didactics proposed in this study in different classrooms, and a conclusion.
Although the terms are not precisely synonymous, Gestaltism (or Gestalt Psychology, or Gestalt Approach) privileges the notion of configuration or form, understanding the phenomenon as an organized totality and not as a mere sum of elements. It is a theory of psychology that emphasizes perception and postulates that the principle of brain functioning is holistic, parallel, and analogical, with personal trends (Greenwood, ).
It also focuses on the idea that human perception is not only observing and interpreting what is contained in the universe around us but is also influenced by several particular and group motivations and expectations (Greenwood, ). Therefore, its focus is on the idea of an active, relational subject and not simply a receiver of information so that the teaching/learning relationship makes all the difference.
Gestaltism did not emerge as a pedagogical method such as constructivism (Ariza & Baez, ; Asoodar et al., ), Paulo Freire's pedagogy (Giroux, ), or Skinner's behaviorism (Watters, ). It is a theory of psychology that emerges as a reaction to associationism, combating the idea of fragmentation of perception. It has been applied in various scientific areas, from economics (Beisser, ), to theology (Thomas et al., ), communication and advertising, and the arts in general (Parsons et al., ).
However, few works present it as a model for creating new educational practices in schools. The example of Pill & Hyndman gives Gestaltism and its applicability in the school setting, highlighting the value of this approach is spontaneous learning. By conceiving perception as a dynamic and integrated process, Gestaltism can provide education resources from actions of creativity (Monsores et al., ).
A robot is a term used for the products of robotics. This field aims to study and develop automated or autonomous technological tools to accomplish specific tasks through specific programming. The first mention of the term robot appeared many years ago in a play produced by Capek about an automaton mechanism that performed specific tasks. Today, the field of robotics draws on knowledge of mechanics, electronics, computing, mathematics, physics, and automation (Niku, ).
A robotic system is composed of mechanical parts manipulated by integrated circuits (microcontrollers). They are programmed to interpret signals from actuators, motors, and sensors and produce movements or automatic responses to stimuli (Niku, ). It aims to produce autonomous tools to assist or replace more complex human tasks. It includes constructions, deactivating bombs or mines in war zones (Mukh, ), performing geoprocessing (Hanisch et al., ), assisting in medical operations (AlQarzaie & AlEnezi, ), and other tasks. Figure 1 presents some models of robots or robotic tools associated with education.
Today, there is greater popularization and better access to instruments capable of developing these tools due to the emergence of lower-cost interfaces composed of cheaper microcontrollers and an entirely didactic apparatus for accessing and programming their functions. Among these new interfaces are the boards of the Arduino family (Chang & Chen, ) or Raspberry (Kingstan & Suchithra, ), which allow people without prior familiarity with this field of technology to have the ability to develop prototypes of mobile robots or automation, much more quickly.
Most robotic instruments work with more sophisticated programming algorithms, such as Deep Learning or Fuzzy Logic. They monitor specific situations, such as watching air quality in large cities, environmental sensing, and checking for disease outbreaks, among other applications requiring more robust programming. Among the programming languages that work with robotics, we have C, java, C++, phyton, and each microcontroller's assemblies (Kim et al., ; Al-Shanoon & Lang, ). Regarding the application of robots and programming in an educational environment, there is the work of Monsores et al., in which a methodology based on Gestaltism is emphasized to build educational robotic resources. Besides, the result of Sisman et al. also shows the application of constructivism to work on the effects of robotics training on children's spatial ability and attitude toward collaborating in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
In work by Mahdi et al., robotics and educational programming are analyzed from the teacher's point of view, looking at how the influence of the IT tool affects a new education perspective. Panskyi & Rowinska work presents an innovative approach to organizing the out-of-school teaching of programming in middle childhood. Yepes et al. show how UAVs can assist in teaching engineering subjects, indicating that the support of robotic resources helps fix diverse learning.
It has chosen robotics as an area in which the use of the gestalt approach would be appropriate to learn IT since it is an area in which students can materialize, in a concrete way, the resources they have developed. It is essential to point out that the Gestalt approach does not deal with knowledge absorption as in constructivism. The latter is one of the widely-adopted teaching methods, whereas the former emphasizes the form of each one's perception of the world (Pill & Hyndman, ; Skottun & Kruger, ).
The beginning of applying the educational method using Gestaltism with robotics and programming, with a bias towards the production of pedagogical and didactic resources to awaken interests in new knowledge, has as its starting point the obtaining of the students' particular visions about IT. One motivation issue for choosing robotics as the prominent IT area in this study was that by studying robotics, students could concretely visualize an object with form, and Gestalt Therapy is the psychology of form (Monsores et al., ; Skottun & Kruger, ).
By encouraging students to use their imagination and creativity to produce an IT resource that has a form that can be touched and even modified, the association with Gestalt Therapy is seamless. The didactic work using this application of psychology results in a comfortable learning environment. The motivation is to give shape to the senses of imagination and creativity in an accessible point of view, without any hermetic methodological formatting, to develop and create their resources, plan how they will be used and for what they will be used (Thomas et al., ; Skottun & Kruger, ).
In this type of practice, the teachers/researchers conduct and organize the meetings and activities. Still, they do not induce or influence the students, who are the main protagonists of the activities and the influencing agents for the classes (Greenwood, ; Skottun & Kruger, ).