Fostering Soft Skills through Educational Robotics: Missed Opportunities and New Directions

Over the past few decades, robotics has increasingly been used in educational contexts, particularly for STEM education. Studies in this area range from robotic assistants to interactive, evolutionary robotic experiments, all based on hands-on activities designed to engage students in practical learning. Beyond STEM subjects, robotics also contributes to the development of 21st Century Skills for Sustainable Development - abilities that shape the way students learn, think and interact with the external world. While soft skills focus more on interpersonal, cognitive, and emotional domains, 21st Century Skills also include job-oriented digital and global competencies. Accordingly, soft skills can be seen as the core component of 21st Century Skills. In this narrative review, we emphasize that the development of soft skills - such as communication, collaboration, empathy, and critical thinking - has predominantly been considered a secondary outcome in Educational Robotics (ER). This raises the central research question: How can educational robotics be employed to support the development of soft skills in students, and which subjects, robots, and methods are best suited to this purpose? In light of rapid technological progress, where AI assistants may partially subsume hard skills, we argue that ER should support the development of soft skills as a key factor for future success, even through unconventional tools such as storytelling (ST).