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A Survey of Future Teachers Suggests Cautious Openness to VR and Humanoid Robot Use

DescriptionAs emerging technologies such as virtual reality and humanoid robots become more capable, one potential application is enhancing engagement, problem-solving, and social-emotional learning in classroom environments. To evaluate future educators’ readiness to implement these technologies in their classrooms and identify potential use cases, 25 future elementary school teachers were surveyed on their general attitudes towards robots, generalized self-efficacy, social and emotional learning competencies, and attitudes towards virtual reality and humanoid robots in teaching and learning. Results show low rates of agreement with both positive and negative personal-level attitudes towards robots, and high agreement with societal-level negative attitudes. Respondents expressed general agreement with their self-efficacy and social-emotional learning competencies, but their attitudes towards VR and robots in the classroom suggest that while they see potential in these technologies, they do not see robots as empathetic and do not feel adequately informed and prepared to implement these technologies. Taken together, future educators might be willing to adopt robots and VR, but they do not feel an immediate need and would require appropriate training and support. Future work should explore specific uses of these technologies, their holistic effects on classroom outcomes, and the nature of support teachers would need.

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