Co-designing a Social Robot for Newcomer Children's Cultural and Language Learning

arXiv cs.RO / 3/31/2026

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Key Points

The paper explores how socially assistive robots could support newcomer children’s cultural orientation and language/literacy learning, despite constraints like limited staff and mixed-proficiency groups.
It reports a co-design study with program tutors and coordinators to identify the design space for a specific social robot, “Maple.”
The authors synthesize recurring domain challenges and discuss how cultural belonging and orientation may be affected by robot interactions in socio-emotionally sensitive contexts.
They propose preliminary, expert-grounded design guidelines for integrating an SAR into classrooms, aiming to inform iterative future evaluation with children and their families.

Abstract

Newcomer children face barriers in acquiring the host country's language and literacy programs are often constrained by limited staffing, mixed-proficiency cohorts, and short contact time. While Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) show promise in education, their use in these socio-emotionally sensitive settings remains underexplored. This research presents a co-design study with program tutors and coordinators, to explore the design space for a social robot, Maple. We contribute (1) a domain summary outlining four recurring challenges, (2) a discussion on cultural orientation and community belonging with robots, (3) an expert-grounded discussion of the perceived role of an SAR in cultural and language learning, and (4) preliminary design guidelines for integrating an SAR into a classroom. These expert-grounded insights lay the foundation for iterative design and evaluation with newcomer children and their families.