Social Robots in Education: To Select or Not to Select a Robot for a Teaching Subject at an Educational Level?

Social robots have been widely adopted in all levels of education for teaching multiple subjects, due to their reported potential to motivate and support learning outcomes. The goal of this work is to systematically research the literature and gather information relative to social robot applications for educational purposes. Subsequently, these applications are classified by educational level and by subject, aiming to investigate which robots are chosen in each case. Five educational levels are defined (preschool, primary, secondary, higher, and lifelong education), 23 teaching subjects, and 50 robots. Results indicate Primary education as the educational level mainly adapting social robots to support teaching courses, language and science courses as the most popular subjects, while NAO and Pepper as the robots mostly used. Results also indicate that the selection of the social robot in each case is not based on a structured scientific approach depending on the level and subject of education. The latter highlights that there is a need to further investigate the appropriate selection process of social robots for specific courses and educational levels, taking into account their future potential to contribute to education, especially considering their already documented contribution without following any specific selection protocol.