EDUCATIONAL ROBOTICS AS A NEW CHALLENGE FOR TRAINING PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS

The aim of this paper is to describe the current problems in the preparation of future IT teachers, and to discuss the possibility of integrating the teaching of educational robotics into the higher education of teachers. The paper will reflect the results of quantitative research conducted in 2017 among teachers of elementary schools in the Czech Republic. Within this framework, the current needs for the preparation of future teachers in connection with the inclusion of educational robotics in teaching were discovered. The results of the research show that there are very few fresh college graduates among teaching staff in educational robotics. It is desirable to include educational robotics in the preparation of teachers in other disciplines, because in addition to leisure time and computer science, it is also possible to find it in other subjects, such as technical education and physics. Depending on the subject, the primary activities for which the robot kits used are changed. Teachers lack deeper and freely available methodological support in the Czech language, which would make it easier for them to overcome the initial difficulties associated with the beginnings of teaching educational robotics. Other problems that teachers must overcome today include the lack of algorithm and programming in the curriculum, the lack of funding for robot kits, and the lack of information and experience.