Mapping educational robotics competencies for pre-service teachers in science course: An exploratory sequential mixed-methods study

Educational robotics is increasingly used to develop pre-service elementary teachers’ computational thinking (CT), yet limited empirical evidence exists on the competencies required for robotics-integrated teaching. This exploratory sequential mixed-methods study identified robotics-related perceived competencies and examined the relationships among CT, technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK), and robotics pedagogical content knowledge (RPCK). Qualitative data from 128 pre-service teachers were analyzed using inductive thematic analysis, followed by a survey of 150 participants analyzed with partial least squares structural equation modeling. The qualitative phase identified 22 perceived competencies grouped into CT, TPACK, RPCK, and complementary professional domains, with digital technology literacy, creativity, and problem-solving emerging most frequently. The quantitative results showed that abstraction and algorithmic thinking were associated with TPACK, whereas decomposition and debugging were associated with RPCK. TPACK showed the strongest association with RPCK. Generalization was excluded from the structural analysis because of insufficient discriminant validity. These findings provide an exploratory and empirically informed mapping of pre-service teachers’ perceived competencies robotics-integrated science teaching and preliminary evidence of associations among selected dimensions of CT, TPACK, and RPCK. The complementary and emergent domain identified in the qualitative phase requires further quantitative examination.