Due to the interdisciplinary nature of robotics, more and more attention has been paid to its effectiveness in the field of education in recent years. This systematic review evaluated existing studies in improving K-12 students’ computational thinking and STEM attitudes. Research articles published between 2010 and 2019 were collated from major databases according to six criteria, and 17 studies were eligible. A meta-analysis was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of educational robots in terms of standardized mean differences (SMD) or mean differences (MD) of test scores as outcome measures. The overall effect size was medium (SMD = 0.46, 95% CI: 0.23–0.69). Subgroup analysis found that some groups to have better effectiveness. Specifically, the effect of STEM attitudes (SMD = 0.01) was smaller than computational thinking (SMD = 0.48). Educational robots had more significant effect on boys (MD = 0.39) than girls (MD = 0.27). The effect in primary school (SMD = 0.27) was higher than in middle school (SMD = 0.04), and the effect was great on short-term instruction with educational robots (SMD = 0.35). Based on these results, the study makes some recommendations for educators about strengthening the influence of educational robots on STEM attitudes, improving the persistence of their learning effects, and further exploring their application models.

由于机器人技术的跨学科性质，近年来，它在教育领域的有效性越来越受到关注。该系统评价评估了现有的研究，以改善K-12学生的计算思维和STEM态度。根据六项标准从主要数据库中整理了2010年至2019年之间发表的研究文章，有17项研究符合条件。进行了荟萃分析，以标准化的测试结果的均值差异（SMD）或均值差异（MD）评估教育机器人的有效性。总体效果大小为中等（SMD = 0.46，95％CI：0.23-0.69）。亚组分析发现，某些组具有更好的效果。具体而言，STEM态度的影响（SMD = 0.01）小于计算思维（SMD = 0.48）。教育机器人对男孩（MD = 0.39）的影响要大于女孩（MD = 0.27）。小学（SMD = 0.27）的效果高于中学（SMD = 0.04），并且对教育机器人的短期教学效果很好（SMD = 0.35）。基于这些结果，该研究为教育工作者提供了一些建议，以加强教育机器人对STEM态度的影响，提高其学习效果的持久性，并进一步探索其应用模型。