Panagiota Christodoulou

Background: As AI‐enabled social robots become more common in schools, children may form strong emotional bonds with them despite robots not being caregivers and lacking the capacities for “true” attachment. Given limited understanding of potential risks and safeguards, professional perspectives are needed to inform responsible design and educational use. Aims: This study explores how educators and psychologists interpret children's attachment‐like (parallel yet different from caregiver‐child ties) bonds with social robots. Sample(s): 123 Greek professionals (62 educators, 61 psychologists) evaluated three vignettes depicting core attachment features, applying human Attachment Theory to child‐robot interactions. Methods: Participants provided written responses to three attachment‐focused vignettes, which were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis to identify recurrent themes in professionals’ interpretations of child–robot bonding. Results: Thematic analysis revealed nine themes: secure bond architecture, robot role negotiation, and balancing potential benefits against risks. Participants emphasised trust, emotional safety, and predictability, while warning against over‐identification and dependency. Personalisation, memory, and responsiveness fostered intimacy but raised also ethical concerns. Strict privacy controls and adult mediation were deemed necessary. Robots were seen as fostering emotional resilience, social scaffolding, and personalised learning, but also as causing dependency, isolation, privacy breaches, and blurred boundaries. Most participants supported a functional alliance model – robots as supervised, goal‐directed learning tools that enhance socioemotional development and transfer it to human relationships, not as attachment substitutes. Conclusions: The Child‐Robot Emotional Bonding Ecosystem framework integrates these insights, showing how design, mediation, and pedagogy shape development. Findings from Greece stress intentional design, adult guidance, and strict ethics to support, not supplant, human growth.

Policymakers in the 21st century consider the application of Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) in the educational context essential to transform instruction and support students in achieving better learning results. However, several questions emerge regarding the conditions of SAR's application in education. The current study aimed to investigate students' perceptions regarding the personality of a SAR involved in learning and instruction, namely the dynamic and unique set of traits and characteristics that shape the SAR's behaviors and interactions with the students. An online questionnaire was administered to 1083 primary (N=390, M=11.23, SD=.72), lower secondary (N=378, M=14.10, SD=.85) and upper secondary (N=315, M=16.82, SD=.77) students from Greece and Finland. The exploratory factor analysis revealed two psychological factors that reflect two types of personality traits of a SAR for learning and instruction: the SAR as a "Regulator" and a "Facilitator" of learning. Then, a Confirmatory Factor Analysis showed that the model in which the two dimensions tap into the same factor that expresses the unity of a SAR's personality for learning and instruction had the best fit to the data. This structure was confirmed across both countries. Still, some age, gender and culture related differences in students’ endorsements of the dimensions of the SAR’s personality were identified. Capturing the dimensions of the personality of a SAR for learning and instruction can inform the design and development of more effective SARs tailored to specific cultural contexts and student preferences. Furthermore, these findings enhance our understanding of Human-Robot Interaction in education.

Empowering teachers with Critical Thinking and an understanding of sustainability is vital for guiding students’ informed decisions and actions in today’s world. Higher education needs innovative, student-centered methods like case-based teaching in order to promote Critical Thinking and the principles of Education for Sustainable Development. The aim of the study was to explore and evaluate pre-service teachers’ Critical Thinking when engaged with case studies in a practicum preparation course centered on Education for Sustainable Development. Nine undergraduate students in teacher education participated in the study and answered four case studies. The case studies’ responses were analyzed through a bottom-up content analysis revealing eight higher-order categories. While approaching the case studies, student teachers followed thinking processes similar to the processes proposed by the iterative models of Critical Thinking. Nevertheless, in some cases, pre-service teachers’ disengagement was evident. The rubric assessment highlighted that the responses fell under three profiles, namely the “Deficient Critical Thinker”, the “Emerging Critical Thinker” and the “Competent Critical Thinker”. The findings emphasize the need for targeted and individualized teaching interventions in teacher higher education programs aiming at Education for Sustainable Development complying with the learning needs of student teachers’ Critical Thinking profiles.

University–Business partnership for collaborative curriculum design, development, and delivery is an important dimension of University–Business Collaboration (UBC), but scarce information exists on how to enhance partnership for the design, development, and implementation of new curricula. With these questions in focus, this article intends to present and discuss the perceived experience during a three-year European funded project, namely, Think4Jobs. This project exemplifies the significance and benefits of UBC in the design, development, and delivery of curricula that meet the evolving demands of the labour market while promoting Critical Thinking (CT) as a foundational 21st century skill to contribute to graduates’ employability. Think4Jobs project brought together a multidisciplinary team of researchers and business organisations from five European countries (Germany, Greece, Lithuania, Portugal, and Romania) with interests in promoting and developing CT and mitigating eventual competence gaps. The project’s success was attributed to key practices, including defining a common conceptualization of CT, employing Participatory Co-Design, and providing common training for university and business partners. Clear objectives, explicit roles, effective communication, and ongoing evaluation further enhanced the collaboration. Experiential learning, real-work problems, and case studies reinforced the curricula, bridging the gap between academia and the labour market. By embracing these insights, future UBC initiatives can empower graduates with the necessary skills to stand out in an ever-changing labour market, contributing to enhanced education and successful careers.

Empowering teachers with Critical Thinking and understanding of sustainability is vital for guiding students’ informed decisions and actions in today’s world. Higher education needs innovative, student-centered methods like case-based teaching in order to promote Critical Thinking and the principles of Education for Sustainable Development. The aim of the study was to explore and evaluate pre-service teachers' Critical Thinking when engaged with case studies in a practicum preparation course centered on Education for Sustainable Development. Nine undergraduate students in Teacher Education participated in the study and answered four case studies. The case studies’ responses were analyzed through a bottom-up content analysis revealing eight higher-order categories. While approaching the case studies, student-teachers followed thinking processes similar to the processes proposed by the iterative models of Critical Thinking as perceived by Garrison (1991) and/or Brookfield (1987). Nevertheless, in some cases, pre-service teachers’ disengagement was evident. The rubric assessment highlighted that the responses fell under three profiles, namely the “Deficient Critical Thinker”, the “Emerging Critical Thinker” and the “Competent Critical Thinker”. The findings emphasize the need for targeted and individualized teaching interventions in teacher higher education programs aiming at Education for Sustainable Development complying with the learning needs of student-teachers’ Critical Thinking profiles.

University-Business partnership for collaborative curriculum design, development and delivery is possibly the less explored dimension of University Business Collaboration (UBC). Even if some models for curricular design and development might be available, scarce information exists on how the partnership is constructed, the new curricula are designed, developed and how they are implemented. This article intends to present and discuss the experience obtained during a three-year European funded Project, namely Think4Jobs. This project exemplifies the significance and benefits of UBC in the design, development and delivery of curricula that meet the evolving demands of the labour market while promoting Critical Thinking (CT) as a foundational 21st century skill to contribute to graduates' employability. Think4Jobs project brought together a multidisciplinary team of researchers and business organisations from five European countries (Germany, Greece, Lithuania, Portugal and Romania) with interests in promoting and developing CT and mitigating eventual competence gaps. The project's success was attributed to key practices, including defining a common conceptualization of CT, employing participatory co-design, and providing common training for university and business partners. Clear objectives, explicit roles, effective communication, and ongoing evaluation further enhanced the collaboration. Experiential learning, real-work problems, and case studies reinforced the curricula, bridging the gap between academia and the labour market. By embracing these insights, future UBC initiatives can empower graduates with the necessary skills to stand out in an ever-changing labour market, contributing to enhanced education and successful careers.

Higher education institutions are responsible for preparing and equipping undergraduate students with the skills required by the labor market, such as critical thinking. However, academics should consider students’ pre-existing ideas before designing and implementing an instructional intervention regarding critical thinking. Drawing on the literature for conceptual change, the current study aimed to map students’ conceptualization of critical thinking and their ideas regarding the acquisition of critical thinking. In total, 243 first-year social sciences students participated in the study. To explore students’ ideas, the authors constructed an instrument with 20 scientific and non-scientific statements about critical thinking. The instrument was a two-tier questionnaire, and participants indicated their level of agreement with each statement using a 5-point Likert scale as well as their confidence in their answers. Students’ ideas were categorized into six groups depending on their endorsements for the statement and their level of confidence in their decision. Results revealed that students had insufficient conceptualization of critical thinking, and their ideas regarding how critical thinking might be acquired were not consistently aligned with those of academics. Implications for instruction are discussed considering students’ ideas on critical thinking.