Ethical governance safeguards for robot-supported mental health education with children¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

The article argues that deploying adaptive AI systems with children and emotionally sensitive content requires strict ethical governance. It states that 'ethical acceptability depends not only on "what works," but on how systems are designed, governed, and explained to stakeholders in context', including teachers, parents, and students. Specific safeguards include transparency about the experimental setting and use of external coaches to control robots in boundary-pushing scenarios.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Strict ethical governance regarding data protection, transparency, and human oversight is necessary when deploying AI components in child-centred educational contexts

Constraints¶

• Prior work raises concerns about data privacy, student over-surveillance, and children's privacy and data protection in classroom robotics

Target Learners¶

• children and adolescents in school settings

Target Learning Goals¶

• safe participation in robot-supported mental health interventions

Related Strategies¶

• Five classroom use cases deploying social robots for emotional learning, conflict mediation, and one-on-one support
• Deploy agentic AI in education with transparency about agentic decisions, human oversight and institutional responsibility
• Address core ethical challenges—data privacy, algorithmic fairness, and transparency—when deploying AI-driven personalized learning
• Apply an affective data governance framework: minimization, purpose limitation, consent, human oversight, and separation from evaluation

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Christ, O., Riedl, R., Schmid, J., Zürcher, P., & Thilo, F. (2026). Theoretical Perspectives on Teaching with Robots: From Interdisciplinary Prerequisites and Necessities in Today's Classrooms to Five Different Types of Robots. AI Educ. 2, 28. https://doi.org/10.3390/aieduc2030028