Educators’ Perception on the Use of Robots in the Early Childhood Environment

Abstract

Understanding teachers in the early childhood education is crucial as it can not only affect the quality of children’s education but also cause many critical problems such as child abuse. A significant amount of research work has been made on the use of robots in childcare classrooms. The finding from the research has shown many advantages such as the improvement of learning performance, social/emotional skills, creativity, concentration period, physical and cognitive development. However, most of the study has been implemented at the K-12 classrooms but not much has been focused on the education at the early childhood classrooms. Importantly, it is very crucial to understand teachers’ perception, demands and technical competence about the new teaching tool, in order to maximize its educational effect. This paper investigates some critical issues existing in both teaching and managing in the early childhood education. It will also explore teachers’ perceptions and expectations on the use of robots to identify some dilemmas that exist in their working and teaching environment. A survey study was conducted with 119 early childhood educators in South Korea. It analyzed the educators’ perception of using robots to improve their teaching performance and to make better outcomes for children, investigated job satisfaction and difficulties that they have in the current work environment. This paper concludes with several guidelines for integrating and setting robotics in the early childhood environment, in order to engender productive outcomes for the future early childhood education.