The Ideal Image of the Educational Robot: The Voice of Preschool Learning Actors

Abstract

In order to provide full support in the field of education as well, robot designers need to get a clear picture as close as possible to what the education actors want.

With this paper, we try to contribute to the shaping of a „perfect” educational robot for preschool instruction that will complement previous research and move on to making these robots according to new paradigms, i.e. robots that children find easy to integrate, that help preschoolers acquire many skills, but that do not distract them from learning.

Thus, the paper, which is part of a larger project, attempts to synthesize, in the first part, the opinion of preschoolers’ teachers and parents through quantitative research.

The image of the robot from the perspective of adults (preschool teachers and parents) is gathered with Godspeed (Bartneck) surveys specialized for human-robot interactions.

Preschoolers’ perceptions are collected by what they can express through drawing (5,6,7 years old) or verbally and by associating them with pre-established images (3,4 years old).  Therefore, in the second part of the study, a picture of the robot is outlined from the variables highlighted by the drawings (children’s drawings being the focus of several relevant researches in the field of early education). The research base involved a sample composed of N=98 children from the central and south-eastern parts of the country (Romania). In the sampling, the gender variable was kept constant.

The research draws a picture of a robot that is easier to integrate among children and teachers in preschool education, a robot that will become an indispensable element in education, even for those who are more reluctant in this field, given the importance of cognitive, emotional and physical development of preschoolers.