Educational potentials in visually androgynous pedagogical agents

In the reported study, we explored student’s attitudes to a visually
androgynous agent in comparison to a male and a female agent in a Teachable
Agent (TA) based math game. Each student interacted with two agents, playing
the game and chatting with them, and were asked which of the two they preferred
(i) as their tutee and (ii) as their conversational partner, and why. Results
were that overall the androgynous agent was preferred over both the female and
male agents. Importantly a visually androgynous agent does not embody categorical
gender attributes and, thus, does not reinforce or reproduce gender stereotypes.
At the same time it is not without gender but rather introduces freedom
for students to ascribe gender. Thus, androgyny is potentially a way to
have femaleness and maleness represented, with corresponding educational
benefits such as role modelling and identification, without risking negative reinforcement
of gender stereotypes.