Envisioning the Future of Social Robots in Education: Perceptions, Applications, and AI Literacy for the Public Good

<p>This thesis investigates alternative social robot designs and deployment strategies to support children’s learning and equip them with the necessary Artificial Intelligence (AI) literacy to interact safely and responsibly with AI. Social robots offer significant promise as embodied learning partners, yet their integration into K-12 classrooms is hindered by high costs, technical complexity, and limited stakeholder involvement. To address these barriers, this thesis evaluates how alternative robot designs and deployment strategies, such as soft robots and “do-it-yourself” (DIY) robotic toolkits, could create more transparent and accessible tools. By exploring children’s baseline knowledge, educator perceptions, and the impact of robot assembly on learning outcomes, this work seeks to move beyond expensive, black-box systems toward accessible, community-driven, and pedagogically grounded social robots designed for the public good. Across four mixed-methods studies, this thesis captures the perspectives of 660 children, parents, teachers, and principals, using surveys, focus groups, interviews, and an active control group design. The results indicate that while these alternative designs could effectively support children’s learning in some contexts, the technology seems more ready than the system around it. Children lack the foundational literacy to engage with AI safely and critically; stakeholders across the educational ecosystem have legitimate and largely unaddressed concerns about equity, governance, and pedagogical control; and teachers hold perceptual biases that limit their ability to deploy different robots effectively. To bridge these gaps, I propose “The Four C’s for Educational Social Robotics”, a visionary roadmap that moves from the minimally designed robot itself (C1: Conscious Design), to the child who builds and personalizes it (C2: Co-Evolving Companions), to the curriculum that embeds it across subjects and age groups (C3: Cross-Curricular Integration), to the community that governs and sustains it (C4: Community Governance). Ultimately, this thesis contributes evidence-based guidelines for a more accessible, realistic, and pedagogically grounded deployment of social robots as community-driven tools, through which children may develop the knowledge, critical awareness, and agency to navigate an AI-shaped world.</p>