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Abstract
This dissertation study explores the dialogic and intra-active engagement of young children, aged 4 to 6, with robotic manipulatives (BeeBots and Cubelets) in two early childhood robotics education programs, which were offered in a community learning center. Drawing on Bakhtins (1981) dialogism and new materialist perspectives (Barad, 2007; Bennett, 2010), I examine how young children make sense of, respond to, and use the robotic manipulatives. Also, I investigate how the robotic manipulatives actively influence and shape the childrens understanding of the robotic manipulatives and their expression of themselves. As an interpretive case study, I conduct a micro-analysis of video-recorded observation data with artifacts such as the childrens engineer logs and lesson plans. The findings of this study present 1) a young childs agentive role in dialogically adopting and adapting the features of programmable robots (BeeBots), the methods of programming, and the perspectives of robots and programming, 2) two girls gender tactics to negotiate with authoritative gender discourses that challenged their femininity and to position themselves as a powerful heroine and a competent robot builder by programming and building robots, and 3) the unexpected but agentive roles of robotic manipulatives in a young childs hands-on inquiry with/about robotic manipulatives (Cubelets) and the childs autotelic bodily engagement as a state of inquiry. This study emphasizes young childrens engagement with robotic manipulatives as inherently heteroglossic and dialogical to produce new meanings of robots/machines, controlling, building, and programming robots, rather than simply accepting the pre-determined meanings and intentions of teachers and manufacturers of the robotic manipulatives. Also, this study stresses the inter-dependent and co-dependent agency of young children and robotic manipulatives in mutually constructing and shaping their dialogic engagements. In addition, this study suggests paying attention to young childrens autotelic and tacit embodied practices to respond to and to use the robotic manipulatives as their mode of inquiry.