A review of social robots in classrooms: Emerging educational technology and teacher education

Abstract

© 2019, Kazan Federal University. All right reserved. The 21st century is the age of robots, an age in which we are witnessing the development of social robots for education. In the future teachers will be required by the labour market to prepare students for work with robotic technology and co-work and interact with robots. Initial teacher education needs to follow the development of robots and prepare students and teachers in applying robotic technology in teaching. In the review study, we aim to identify how robotic technology is applied in classrooms on different educational levels and subjects. We performed a review of the Web of Science Database for the period between 2006 and 2018. The analysis categories included: The educational level and research participants who experienced social robot activities, subject areas, outcome types and robot-learner interaction time. We also examined the research design and publication source. Findings indicate that the educational-pedagogical aspects in the studies often represent more a vehicle, rather than a final goal of integrating robots into teaching practice. The studies reviewed focus mostly on mixed human-robot interaction (HRI) and educational-pedagogical outcomes. Robotic learning activities are prepared in the function of research goals, and not for the introduction of robots into regular teaching practices. They engage a small number of students in a diversity of learning contexts. Robot-learner interaction takes place primarily as a unique experience or as several short-term ones, during fragmented activities that rarely approach the time unit of the lesson. Robots carry out short, detailed tasks in classrooms for which lengthy studies and preparations have been required. The novelty of this work is in focusing also on (1) The demarcation between the focus of studies on educational-pedagogical outcomes; educational-pedagogical and HRI outcomes; HRI outcomes; (2) study of the robot-learner interaction time dimension.