Hyun‐Kyung Park

Papers

Total Citations

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About

Hyun-Kyung Park is a pioneering researcher in the field of educational robotics, with a specific focus on early childhood education. Her work investigates how young children interact with and perceive intelligent robots in classroom settings, bridging the gap between human-robot interaction and developmental pedagogy. Park’s most cited study, “The Usability of a Robot as an Educational Assistant in a Kindergarten and Young Children’s Perceptions of their Relationship with the Robot” (2010), is a landmark field study conducted over twelve days in a Seoul kindergarten. Using a mixed-methods approach—including observation, picture drawing, and interviews—she demonstrated that children can form meaningful, positive relationships with robotic assistants, laying crucial groundwork for integrating social robots into early learning environments. In her earlier work, “Intelligence Robot Contents for Early Childhood Education Settings” (2009), Park developed and designed teacher-assistant content for the iRobiQ robot, creating six core functions (attendance, activities, gallery, learning, calling, and timer) grounded in the PLU model, which ensures that robots fulfill playful, learning, and utilitarian roles. With citations totaling nearly 10 across these foundational papers, Park’s contributions are essential reading for anyone interested in the design, deployment, and child-centered evaluation of educational robots in real-world kindergartens.