"Educational Robotics integration into Storytelling activities to promote kindergarteners’ communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking. A scoping review: 2014-2024"

Communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking (4Cs) are regarded as vital skills for well-being and success. Nowadays, education needs to promote them by using innovative tools and enriching traditional methods. So, educational robotics integrated into storytelling activities arise as contributors to that. Yet, there hasn’t been any mapping of the research conducted in this field. Consequently, we present a scoping review of 18 papers out of 203 initially retrieved from 5 databases from 2014 to 2024 exploring kindergarteners’ 4Cs via robotics combined with storytelling. Based on our findings, communication, and collaboration are examined the most and creativity the least. Most of the researchers used the mixed method focusing on qualitative tools, examining quite a small sample size, and utilizing humanoid robots most often. It is illustrated that robotics integrated into storytelling can promote kindergarteners’ 4Cs but further research is needed related to children’s expression of emotions while interacting with the robots and peers. Moreover, this scoping provides activities, included in the reviewed papers, combining robotics and storytelling to develop kindergarteners’ 4Cs. Finally, it is recommended to design more quantitative research in the related field and form models of full activities utilizing robotics and storytelling to promote all 4Cs in kindergarten.