This paper presents new ways to imagine and carry out creative pedagogies that use robots to teach socio-technical topics. The paper presents key theoretical and methodological ideas that informed a project co-designed in partnership with teachers and learners from Manurewa High School. This project portrays a speculative story of an affable humanoid robot who shares its goal of running for Mayor of the city of Auckland in Aotearoa New Zealand and asks children for advice on how to prepare for this future role. The findings from this case study are organised around three main themes: suspending disbelief, powerful questions, and breaking the fourth wall. A discussion around learning using digital technologies more creatively and more critically closes the paper. The appropriateness of robots for creative and dialogic learning call s for the participation of learners and teachers in playful co-crea tion activities that transgress the conventional roles and scripts in the classroom and the curriculum.
Ames, M. G. (2019). The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop per Child. The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10868.001.0001
Anderson, D. R. (1986). The Evolution of Peirce’s Concept of Abduction. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 22, 145-164.
Auckland Council (2012). The Auckland Plan. http://theplan.theaucklandplan.govt.nz/
Ballard, P. J., Anderson, G., Moore, D. P., & Daniel, S. S. (2021). Youth Experiences in Authoring Action: The Impact of an Arts-Based Youth Program on Youth Development. Journal of Adolescent Research, 38, 178-210. https://doi.org/10.1177/07435584211006787
Banathy, B. H. (2013). Designing Social Systems in a Changing World. Springer Science & Business Media.
Benitti, F. B. V. (2012). Exploring the Educational Potential of Robotics in Schools: A Systematic Review. Computers & Education, 58, 978-988. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2011.10.006
Berryman, M., Eley, E., & Copeland, D. (2017). Listening and Learning from Rangatahi Maori: The Voices of Maori Youth. Critical Questions in Education, 8, 476-494.
Biesta, G. J. J. (2015). Beautiful Risk of Education. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315635866
Blevins, B., LeCompte, K., & Wells, S. (2016). Innovations in Civic Education: Developing Civic Agency through Action Civics. Theory & Research in Social Education, 44, 344-384. https://doi.org/10.1080/00933104.2016.1203853
Bogad, L. M. (2016). Electoral Guerrilla Theatre: Radical Ridicule and Social Movements (2nd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315645360
Braun, V., Clarke, V., Hayfield, N., & Terry, G. (2019). Thematic Analysis. In P. Liamputtong (Ed.), Handbook of Research Methods in Health Social Sciences (pp. 843-860). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5251-4_103
Brazier, C. (2017). Building the Future: Children and the Sustainable Development Goals in Rich Countries. Innocenti Report Card 14, UNICEF.
Brecht, B. (2014). Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Campbell, D. E., Levinson, M., & Hess, F. M. (2012). Making Civics Count: Citizenship Education for a New Generation. Harvard Education Press.
Carlone, H. B., Huffling, L. D., Tomasek, T., Hegedus, T. A., Matthews, C. E., Allen, M. H., & Ash, M. C. (2015). ‘Unthinkable’ Selves: Identity Boundary Work in a Summer Field Ecology Enrichment Program for Diverse Youth. International Journal of Science Education, 37, 1524-1546. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2015.1033776
Ceha, J., Law, E., Kulic, D., Oudeyer, P.-Y., & Roy, D. (2021). Identifying Functions and Behaviours of Social Robots for in-Class Learning Activities: Teachers’ Perspective. International Journal of Social Robotics, 14, 747-761. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-021-00820-7
Chee, Y. S. (2015). Games-to-Teach or Games-to-Learn: Unlocking the Power of Digital Game-Based Learning through Performance. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-518-1
Cheng, Y.-W., Sun, P.-C., & Chen, N.-S. (2018). The Essential Applications of Educational Robot: Requirement Analysis from the Perspectives of Experts, Researchers and Instructors. Computers & Education, 126, 399-416. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2018.07.020
Connor, A. M., & Sosa, R. (2018). The A-Z of Creative Technologies. EAI Endorsed Transactions on Creative Technologies, 18, e3. https://doi.org/10.4108/eai.10-4-2018.154460
Conti, D., Cirasa, C., Di Nuovo, S., & Di Nuovo, A. (2020). “Robot, Tell Me a Tale!”: A Social Robot as Tool for Teachers in Kindergarten. Interaction Studies, 21, 220-242. https://doi.org/10.1075/is.18024.con
Deublein, A., Pfeifer, A., Merbach, K., Bruckner, K., Mengelkamp, C., & Lugrin, B. (2018). Scaffolding of Motivation in Learning Using a Social Robot. Computers & Education, 125, 182-190. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2018.06.015
DiSalvo, B., Yip, J., Bonsignore, E., & DiSalvo, C. (2017). Participatory Design for Learning: Perspectives from Practice and Research. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315630830
DiSalvo, C. (2009). Design and the Construction of Publics. Design Issues, 25, 48-63. https://doi.org/10.1162/desi.2009.25.1.48
DiSalvo, C., Lodato, T., Fries, L., Schechter, B., & Barnwell, T. (2011). The Collective Articulation of Issues as Design Practice. CoDesign, 7, 185-197. https://doi.org/10.1080/15710882.2011.630475
Dunne, A., & Raby, F. (2013). Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. The MIT Press.
Else, G. F. (1945). The Case of the Third Actor. Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, 76, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.2307/283321
Epstein, R., Roberts, G., & Beber, G. (2008). Parsing the Turing Test: Philosophical and Methodological Issues in the Quest for the Thinking Computer. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6710-5
Ezeamuzie, N. O., & Leung, J. S. C. (2021). Computational Thinking through an Empirical Lens: A Systematic Review of Literature. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 60, 481-511. https://doi.org/10.1177/07356331211033158
Findeli, A., Brouillet, D., Martin, S., Moineau, C., & Tarrago, R. (2008). Research through Design and Transdisciplinarity: A Tentative Contribution to the Methodology of Design Research. In Swiss Design Network (Ed.), Focused—Current Design Research Projects and Methods (pp. 67-94). Swiss Design Network.
Flannery, L. P., & Bers, M. U. (2013). Let’s Dance the “Robot Hokey-Pokey!”. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 46, 81-101. https://doi.org/10.1080/15391523.2013.10782614
Flotten, K. J., Guerreiro, A. I. F., Simonelli, I., Solevag, A. L., & Aujoulat, I. (2021). Adolescent and Young Adult Patients as Co-Researchers: A Scoping Review. Health Expectations, 24, 1044-1055. https://doi.org/10.1111/hex.13266
Foster, J., & Taylor, D. (2019). Voter Turnout Decline in New Zealand: A Critical Review of the Literature and Suggestions for Future Research. New Zealand Sociology, 34, 1-26.
Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Continuum.
Gaver, W. (2012). What Should We Expect from Research through Design? In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 937-946). The Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/2207676.2208538
Gibbons, A., & Kupferman, D. W. (2019). Flow My Tears, the Teacher Said: Science Fiction as Method. In S. Farquhar, & E. Fitzpatrick, (Eds.), Innovations in Narrative and Metaphor (pp. 167-181). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6114-2_11
Gibbons, A., & Snake-Beings, E. (2018). DiY (Do-It-Yourself) Pedagogy: A Future-Less Orientation to Education. Open Review of Educational Research, 5, 28-42. https://doi.org/10.1080/23265507.2018.1457453
Greenfield, A. (2017). Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life. Verso Books.
Grocott, L., & Sosa, R. (2018). The Contribution of Design in Interdisciplinary Collaborations: A Framework for Amplifying Project-Grounded Research. In J. Oliver (Ed.), Associations: Creative Practice and Research. Melbourne University Press. https://www.mup.com.au/books/9780522869996-associations
Hipkins, R. (2012). Taking a Future-Focus: A Personal Response to Review of TLRI School-Sector Projects, 2003-2012. NZCER. http://www.tlri.org.nz/sites/default/files/pages/Taking%20a%20future%20focus%20%20Rose%20Hipkins%20.pdf
Hooks, B. (2014). Teaching to Transgress. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203700280
Illich, I. (2021). Tools for Conviviality. Marion Boyars.
Jenlink, P. M. (2004). Discourse Ethics in the Design of Educational Systems: Considerations for Design Praxis. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 21, 237-249. https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.624
Jenlink, P., & Carr, A. A. (1996). Conversation as a Medium for Change in Education. Educational Technology, 36, 31-38.
Kaipainen, K., Jarske, S., Varsaluoma, J., & Vaananen, K. (2022). Adolescents’ Perceptions of the Role of Social Robots in Civic Participation: An Exploratory Study. In 2022 17th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/HRI53351.2022.9889636
Kara, H. (2015). Creative Research Methods in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide. Policy Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1t88xn4
Konijn, E. A., & Hoorn, J. F. (2020). Robot Tutor and Pupils’ Educational Ability: Teaching the Times Tables. Computers & Education, 157, Article ID: 103970. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2020.103970
Kucuk, S., & Sisman, B. (2017). Behavioral Patterns of Elementary Students and Teachers in One-to-One Robotics Instruction. Computers & Education, 111, 31-43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2017.04.002
Light, A., Simpson, G., Weaver, L., & Healey, P. G. T. (2009). Geezers, Turbines, Fantasy Personas: Making the Everyday into the Future. In Proceedings of the Seventh ACM Conference on Creativity and Cognition (pp. 39-48). The Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/1640233.1640243
Lukens, J., & DiSalvo, C. (2011). Speculative Design and Technological Fluency. International Journal of Learning and Media, 3, 23-40. https://doi.org/10.1162/IJLM_a_00080
Manzini, E., & Coad, R. (2015). Design, When Everybody Designs: An Introduction to Design for Social Innovation. MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9873.001.0001
Margolin, V., & Margolin, S. (2002). A “Social Model” of Design: Issues of Practice and Research. Design Issues, 18, 24-30. https://doi.org/10.1162/074793602320827406
Margolis, J., Estrella, J., Hole, J. J., & Nao, K. (2017). Stuck in the Shallow End: Education, Race, and Computing. MIT Press.
Mateas, M., & Sengers, P. (1998). Narrative Intelligence. John Benjamins Publishing.
McArthur, J., & Robin, E. (2019). Victims of Their Own (Definition of) Success: Urban Discourse and Expert Knowledge Production in the Liveable City. Urban Studies, 56, 1711-1728. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098018804759
Morrison, S. L., & Vaioleti, T. M. (2011). AKO—A Traditional Learning Concept for Maori and Pacific Youth. Bildung und Erziehung, 64, 395-408. https://doi.org/10.7788/bue.2011.64.4.395
O’Gieblyn, M. (2021). God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=PxQLEAAAQBAJ
Papadopoulos, I., Lazzarino, R., Miah, S., Weaver, T., Thomas, B., & Koulouglioti, C. (2020). A Systematic Review of the Literature Regarding Socially Assistive Robots in Pre-Tertiary Education. Computers & Education, 155, Article ID: 103924. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2020.103924
Rogers, Y., Frauenberger, C., & Quintana, C. (2017). Conversation: Tensions and Possibilities between Learning and Participatory Design. In B. DiSalvo, J. Yip, E. Bonsignore, & C. DiSalvo (Eds.), Participatory Design for Learning: Perspectives from Practice and Research (pp. 225-234). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315630830-22
Sanders, E. B. N., & Stappers, P. J. (2012). Convivial Toolbox: Generative Research for the Front End of Design. BIS Publishers.
Shanahan, A. M. (2018). Pirated Pedagogy: Repurposing Brecht’s Performance Techniques for Revolutions in Teaching. In A. Fliotsos & G. S. Medford (Eds.), New Directions in Teaching Theatre Arts (pp. 193-208). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89767-7_12
Simonsen, J., & Robertson, T. (2012). Routledge International Handbook of Participatory Design. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203108543
Smakman, M., Vogt, P., & Konijn, E. A. (2021). Moral Considerations on Social Robots in Education: A Multi-Stakeholder Perspective. Computers & Education, 174, Article ID: 104317. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2021.104317
Sosa, R., & Grocott, L. (2020). The Creative Translation of Design Methods into Social Research Contexts. In H. Kara & S. Khoo (Eds.), Researching in the Age of COVID-19 Vol 3: Volume III: Creativity and Ethics (Vol. 3, pp. 9-19). Policy Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv18dvt3x.6
Velentza, A.-M., Fachantidis, N., & Lefkos, I. (2021). Learn with Surprize from a Robot Professor. Computers & Education, 173, Article ID: 104272. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2021.104272
Velentza, A.-M., Pliasa, S., & Fachantidis, N. (2020). Future Teachers Choose Ideal Characteristics for Robot Peer-Tutor in Real Class Environment. In A. Reis, J. Barroso, J. B. Lopes, T. Mikropoulos, & C.-W. Fan (Eds.), Technology and Innovation in Learning, Teaching and Education. TECH-EDU 2020. Communications in Computer and Information Science (Vol. 1384, pp. 476-491). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73988-1_39
Vester, A. (2018). Removing the Decile Label: An Inquiry on the Causes, Impacts and Possible Mitigation of the Stigmatisation That Accompanies Resourcing for Disadvantage. E. A. Limited.
Wenman, M. (2003). ‘Agonistic Pluralism’ and Three Archetypal Forms of Politics. Contemporary Political Theory, 2, 165-186. https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300091
Whitfield, K. D. M. (2021). Local Government and Youth Voter Turnout: Obstacles and Solutions for Aotearoa New Zealand. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Otago.
Wood, L. J., Lehmann, H., Dautenhahn, K., Robins, B., Rainer, A., & Syrdal, D. S. (2016). Robot-Mediated Interviews with Children: What Do Potential Users Think? Interaction Studies, 17, 438-460. https://doi.org/10.1075/is.17.3.07woo
Xia, Y., & LeTendre, G. (2021). Robots for Future Classrooms: A Cross-Cultural Validation Study of “Negative Attitudes toward Robots Scale” in the US Context. International Journal of Social Robotics, 13, 703-714. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-020-00669-2