ABSTRACT
This chapter describes experimental research conducted in 2022 by the ‘Luciano Gallino’Laboratory of Behaviour Simulation and Educational Robotics (University of Turin) in the context of an Italian primary school and focused on using the social robot Nao. This small humanoid robot was programmed to act as an Intelligent Tutoring Robot (ITR) capable of relating to students and conducting TCR (Test of Relational Concepts) with them in order to gauge their understanding of spatial-temporal concepts. Such concepts are important because they underlie some of the future knowledge children will need to acquire. In this experiment, Nao autonomously collected the information required by the test, processed it and, at the end of the activity, provided the teacher with a profile of each student and the class as a whole, supporting teaching by also pointing out the critical areas that needed to be addressed. This discussion takes into account considerations about social robot use in education as outlined in international research and builds on a previous experimental study, conducted in 2014–2015 with a sample of about 220 children from a school in the province of Turin (IT), the results of which suggested that educational robotics are effective in enhancing students’ understanding of spatial-temporal relationships in the early years of primary school.
