Multi-stakeholder insights for designing and implementing safe, effective, and accessible social robots in K-12 Education

Globally, K-12 education systems face increasing burdens from teacher shortages, rising demands for personalized education, and the necessity of fostering future-ready digital competencies. Social robots as a technology offer great promise to help alleviate these systemic burdens. However, their deployment is complicated by ethical, functional, and systemic barriers. In this study, we deployed a multi-stakeholder approach, integrating surveys and interviews with 372 children, parents, teachers, and school principals to develop a more precise overview of the opportunities for and barriers to social robot integration across the full K-12 spectrum. We identified five overarching opportunities and six primary areas of concern. Our analysis identified universal priorities important to all stakeholders, alongside crucial differences rooted in the distinct roles and risk perceptions of each stakeholder. Based on these findings, we propose a roadmap for successful robot deployment building off of three foundational pillars: systemic preparation, pedagogical integration, and a human-centric robot design. This work provides guidelines for policymakers, robot developers and practitioners (e.g., teachers) to ensure that social robots enhance and support the K-12 educational ecosystem.