Robots in education

Omschrijving

The moral challenges created by the introduction of social robots in primary education are highly complex because they are related to a broad range of values and moral considerations of a wide range of relevant stakeholders such as parents, teachers, students of education, children, school managers and representatives of the robot industry. This dissertation aimed to identify the key values and examine the moral considerations of each of those different stakeholders, relevant to education. In doing so, the results of the studies in this dissertation were integrated into this final chapter to provide a first step towards guidelines, or a so-called code of conduct, on how social robots can be designed and used in such a way that robots do not undermine the values and moral considerations of the various stakeholders in education. Our empirically based research provides an important first step towards the integration of social robots in primary education in a morally justified manner. When more schools gain experience with social robots, our proposed code of conduct may need finetuning, alterations or extensions. However, for now, we have provided a solid stepping stone for schools, robot designers, programmers and engineers to develop and use social robots in education in a morally justified way. We thereby paved the way for social robots to be explored as an assistive technology for teachers and children in primary education.