Social robotics in music education: A systematic review

Abstract

IntroductionSocial robotics applied to the educational context deals with proposals that start from the present to shape the future of what training in a specific subject can be. On this occasion, the aim is to investigate the connection between the utilization of social robots and the teaching–learning processes that take place within a formal music education environment at any stage of education.MethodsTo carry out this research, the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) model served as a reference to perform a systematic review of articles published in two of the most important scientific databases, Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus, since 2015.ResultsA total of four articles fulfilled the inclusion criteria.DiscussionOur findings attest that social robotics still remains a practically unknown topic. Hardly any experiences have been developed in classrooms. In general, it is considered necessary for education, and more specifically for music, not to be left out of the developments in social robotics. This technology, which is increasingly present in various areas of our society, responds to the objective of defining the 21st century, and musical education is part of it.

The use of social robots as teaching assistants in schools: implications for research and practice

“…Allocating resources for this integration may compromise support in other critical areas, introducing significant ethical considerations for administrators deciding whether to adopt this technology. Martinez-Roig et al (2023) discuss limitations in their study on social robots in music teaching and provide insights into using social robotics, suggesting future research directions that could involve implementing social robots across various educational levels, providing diverse perspectives. Additionally, exploring students' experiences and perspectives with social robots could be a valuable avenue for further investigation.…”

Pre-service teachers’ perceptions towards integrating educational robotics in the primary school

“…In the case of Portugal, in addition to alignment with these international guidelines, programming and educational robotics (ER) appear in the primary school mathematics curricula associated with the development of computational thinking skills (Ministério da Educação [Ministry of Education], 2021a, 2021b, 2021c, 2021d. ER is a subject of growing interest (I) in the scientific community (Anwar et al, 2019;Benitti, 2012;Jung & Won, 2018;López-Belmonte et al, 2021;Oliveira et al, 2023;Sapounidis et al, 2023;Toh et al, 2016;Xia & Zhong, 2018) in areas as diverse as the use of social robots in classrooms (Smakman et al, 2022;Woo et al, 2021), music teaching (Martinez-Roig et al, 2023) or to promote curricular integration (El-Hamamsy et al, 2021;Kim, 2019;Sapounidis & Alimisis, 2021). Integration of ER in classroom settings has the potential to promote meaningful learning (Athanasiou et al, 2019;Zhong & Xia, 2020), such as in the development of computational thinking skills (Dong et al, 2023;Louka & Papadakis, 2023), STEM subjects (Kim et al, 2015;Sapounidis et al, 2023), physics (Addido et al, 2023) and mathematics (Zhong & Xia, 2020), with a growing number of countries 2 / 24 including ER as an optional component in the curriculum (Mangina et al, 2023).…”