Parents' and children's learning when collaborating on inquiry-based mathematics and computational thinking tasks

In this paper we study how children aged 12-15 years learn together with their parents while solving a series of playful inquiry-based tasks with an educational robot. The purpose of the study is to understand how children and their parents learn mathematics and computational thinking in non-formal out-of-school learning activities. For the study we designed tasks that included mathematic problem solving and programming. The tasks were designed based on input from three mathematics teachers who participated in individual workshops. Over a period of approximately six weeks, three families worked together on the tasks. In the process, they were told to self-record and self-assess the process. The families video-recorded the process and after each task they completed they answered a few questions. At the end of the intervention, we interviewed the families about the process. The results showed examples of how the families worked with mathematics and programming within different practices. In general, the children were more challenged when it came to understanding the problems, the abstraction process and problem solving. In this part they received guidance from the parents. Conversely, the children were not particularly challenged by programming and in applying mathematics in the solutions..