Exploring Socially Assistive Peer Mediation Robots for Teaching Conflict Resolution to Elementary School Students

TL;DR

This exploratory study investigates how elementary students respond to using socially assistive robots for practicing peer mediation, highlighting positive feedback and potential for conflict resolution education.

Contribution

It introduces the use of SARs in peer mediation role-play activities for elementary students and examines their impact and student engagement in this context.

Findings

Majority of students responded positively to the activity.

Some students learned how to help friends during conflicts.

Varying reading levels affected participation and engagement.

Abstract

In peer mediation--an approach to conflict resolution used in many K-12 schools in the United States--students help other students to resolve conflicts. For schools without peer mediation programs, socially assistive robots (SARs) may be able to provide an accessible option to practice peer mediation. We investigate how elementary school students react to a peer mediator role-play activity through an exploratory study with SARs. We conducted a small single-session between-subjects study with 12 participants. The study had two conditions, one with two robots acting as disputants, and the other without the robots and just the tablet. We found that a majority of students had positive feedback on the activity, with many students saying the peer mediation practice helped them feel better about themselves. Some said that the activity taught them how to help friends during conflict, indicating that the use of SARs for peer mediation practice is promising. We observed that participants had varying reading levels that impacted their ability to read and dictate the turns in the role-play script, an important consideration for future study design. Additionally, we found that some participants were more expressive while reading the script and throughout the activity. Although we did not find statistical differences in pre-/post-session self-perception and quiz performance between the robot and tablet conditions, we found strong correlations (p<0.05) between certain trait-related measures and learning-related measures in the robot condition, which can inform future study design for SARs for this and related contexts.