Irûmi increased girls' STEM toy preferences and gender flexibility regarding who can play with STEM toys¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r2 · q3 · i1 small
Currency · newest study 2026 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i1 Among girls, the STEM Toy Preference Index rose by 0.152 SD and the STEM Toy Gender Flexibility Index by 0.196 SD; boys' effects were not statistically significant. → Emma Näslund-Hadley 2026

Evidence¶

Emma Näslund-Hadley 2026¶

Emma Näslund-Hadley, Juan Manuel Hernández-Agramonte, Humberto Santos, Pablo Zoido. (2026). Impact of an educational robot-based intervention on second-graders computational thinking skills: experimental evaluation of the Irûmi program in Paraguay. Education Tech Research Dev. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-026-10675-2

q3 · i1 · causal · r2

Heterogeneous-effects estimates by gender (Eq. 2, Table 6) from the cluster RCT. The article reports a printed effect size of 0.152 SD for girls' STEM Toy Preference Index and a printed effect size of 0.196 SD for the STEM Toy Gender Flexibility Index ("Irûmi increased the STEM Toy Gender Flexibility Index by 0.196 SD (0.009 SD + 0.187 SD)").

"For girls, the impact was both positive and statistically significant, with Irûmi increasing the STEM Toy Preference Index by 0.152 SD (0.022 SD + 0.130 SD)."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• The Irûmi robot-based program improved second-graders' computational thinking scores by 0.089 standard deviations in Paraguay — related
• An audio-augmented toy produced significantly longer cooperative play than the same toy without augmentation in triads of 6- to 11-year-olds — related