Social robots are increasingly used in educational settings, but research on human–robot interaction in schools has largely focused on robotic functions and effects. Teacher attitudes towards robots are an important factor in determining the effectiveness of robot-related classroom interventions. In this paper we assessed the usefulness of the Negative Attitudes Toward Robots Scale (NARS) for use in U.S. populations. We reviewed research on the use of NARS and on teacher attitudes toward social robots, showing the potential of this scale for use in the field of education. Using data from 54 undergraduate students in a pre-service teacher education course, we found slightly different subscale loadings on the NARS than previous studies. We identified items on the scale that needed clarification and noted that the paucity of items related to emotional responses may limit the effectiveness of the scale as an international tool for assessing attitudes given cultural differences in emotion. We also found that lack of prior experience with robots was the strongest predictor of negative attitudes towards robots, suggesting that increased exposure to social robots in teacher education might be an effective way to improve educator attitudes toward robots.

社会机器人在教育环境中的使用越来越多，但是在学校中人机交互的研究主要集中在机器人的功能和效果上。教师对机器人的态度是确定与机器人相关的课堂干预效果的重要因素。在本文中，我们评估了对机器人的负面态度量表（NARS）在美国人群中使用的有效性。我们回顾了有关NARS的使用以及教师对社交机器人态度的研究，表明了该规模在教育领域的应用潜力。在职前教师教育课程中使用来自54名本科生的数据，我们发现NARS上的子量表负荷与以前的研究略有不同。我们在量表上确定了需要澄清的项目，并指出与情感反应有关的项目很少，可能会限制该量表作为一种国际工具的有效性，因为该工具可以评估在情感上存在文化差异的态度。我们还发现，缺乏对机器人的先前经验是对机器人持消极态度的最强预测指标，这表明在教师教育中增加对社交机器人的接触可能是改善教育者对机器人态度的有效途径。