Social Robotics and Intercultural Pedagogy

Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy has emerged in recent years as a fundamental theoretical approach to incorporating children’s different languages, cultures, and identities into the teaching process, leading to the consolidation of the concept of Intercultural Education. On the other hand, social robotics has recently shown its potential applications both as a powerful tool in the educational sector, to help children learn a second language or to deal with children’s special needs, also being an instrument for inclusion. This paper introduces the project SONRIE, which has the primary goal of defining a software framework for social robots able to operate in kindergartens and primary schools with children of different cultures. The presented work represents the initial phase of this project, aimed at analyzing some of the technical and scientific issues that may arise when deploying a social robot in such contexts, also proposing possible solutions to these challenges.