A bibliometric and content analysis of educational robotics’ impact on communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity in kindergarten

Abstract

Communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity are 21st-century skills required to be developed in educational settings from an early age. Robotics seems to contribute to that. Therefore, this study focuses on kindergarten and explores the current research trends regarding children’s development of these skills via robotics. It aims to a) construct links between the main factors in the existing research, b) map the related field, and identify gaps to enhance our understanding. In this context, a bibliometric analysis using the Bibliometrix package and CiteSpace and a content analysis utilizing the Atlas.ti Software is employed covering 203 of 3822 studies conducted between 2014 and December 2024. Based on the findings, the most frequently examined topics are social-anthropomorphic robots, human-robot interaction, and computational thinking under the umbrella of educational robotics and skills development. The highest publication performance belongs to the USA, Italy, Japan, China, and Greece. The strongest sources are ACM, IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, the Education and Information Technologies Journal, the International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction, and the Computers and Education Journal. Besides, Papert, Wing, and Bers arise as the most influential authors. Furthermore, most studies explore one or two C-skills, examining critical thinking the most and creativity the least during interventions focused on several domains but rarely on skills promotion. Moreover, most researchers choose the qualitative method, using small sample sizes, wheeled, floor robots, and various learning theories in short-term interventions. Finally, robots are utilized as assistive instruction kits, teammates, and educators’ assistants while children act as researchers-constructors.