Robot illustrated: Exploring elementary students’ perceptions of robots via the draw-a-robot test

Abstract

Robotics education has drawn great attention in K-12 education worldwide. Hence, it is worthwhile to explore how students perceive robots. This exploratory study used the draw-a-picture technique to explore elementary school students’ perceptions of robots. A total of 1069 Chinese elementary school students were enrolled to illustrate how they perceive robots through the Draw-a-Robot Test (DART). A coding checklist (DART-C) was developed to capture the contents of student drawings. Data analysis showed that there are stereotypical perceptions of robots held by elementary school students. The majority of students portrayed a special robot doing services in a home-based scene with no human aside. In addition, remarkable cross-grade and cross-gender differences were identified in students’ perceptions of robots. Based on the findings, several implications were proposed for the future development of robotics education. Therefore, this study can set a solid foundation for future research on robotics education.

Keywords:

• Perceptions of robots
• robotics education
• draw-a-picture technique
• drawing analysis
• elementary school

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank all the students who participated in this study. The acknowledgment also goes to the school teachers Dongyan Tang, Haimin Huang, Leming Zhou, Sensen Huang, Shisi Nan, Xiaonv Li, and Yuemei Du who contributed to data collection.

Author contributions

Xinli Zhang: Conceptualization, Writing–reviewing, Funding acquisition, Project administration, Supervision. Yuchen Chen: Conceptualization, Methodology, Data collection, Data analysis, Data curation, Writing–original draft, Funding acquisition. Yiwei Bao: Data collection. Lailin Hu: Project administration, Supervision. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Ethical statement

This study obtained informed consent from parents, teachers, and students beforehand, and was also approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Graduate Institute of Wenzhou University with approval number WZU-2022-0609C.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by the Humanities and Social Sciences Scientific Research Program of the Ministry of Education, China under [grant number: 21YJA880027], and Wenzhou City Philosophy and Social Science Fund, China under [grant number: 22wsk669].

Notes on contributors

Xinli Zhang

Xinli Zhang is an associate professor at the Department of Educational Technology, College of Education as well as the vice head of the Research Center of STEM Education, Wenzhou University, China. Her research interests include AI education, robotics education, programming and computational thinking education for children, and STEM education.

Yuchen Chen

Yuchen Chen is a graduate student at the Department of Educational Technology, College of Education as well as a research assistant at the Research Center of STEM Education, Wenzhou University, China. His research interests include AI education, robotics education, programming and computational thinking education for children, and STEM education.

Yiwei Bao

Yiwei Bao is a graduate student at the Department of Educational Technology, College of Education, Wenzhou University, China. His research interests include Computer Science education and STEM education.

Lailin Hu

Lailin Hu is a professor at the Department of Educational Technology, College of Education as well as the head of the Research Center of STEM Education, Wenzhou University, China. His research interests include programming and computational thinking education for children, and STEM education.