Conference Program

From work to everyday life, AI profoundly transforms processes and social relationships in ways that we are only beginning to understand. Human interactions, economic structures, and even decision-making processes are undergoing an unprecedented metamorphosis. With the rapid growth and diffusion of Artificial Intelligence technologies, many countries have recognized the importance of developing a specific national strategy aimed at promoting the effective, regulated, and sustainable adoption of these technologies.

With particular regard to sustainability, the concept of transcalarity can represent a meaningful interpretative key for understanding how sustainability education from a transcalar perspective may foster the ability to recognize connections, interdependencies, and the consequences of choices made by individuals regarding AI, as well as by collective actors within complex systems. Indeed, AI operates simultaneously across multiple levels:
(i) Global: shaping information dynamics, technological infrastructures, and the scientific capacities needed to address sustainability challenges (climate, biodiversity, food security);
(ii) National and institutional: influencing educational policies, school curricula, and investments in digital skills;
(iii) Local and community: supporting participatory processes, environmental data management, and local monitoring tools;
(iv) Individual: affecting the ways in which learners study, contributing to the development of critical thinking, and shaping the relationship between individuals and technology.

Within this perspective, the paper aims to present and discuss the structural elements and the main educational outcomes of a new socio-educational practice designed to promote sustainability education in relation to the use of AI: the semi-immersive techno-aesthetic experience. This experience was developed within the international research project CairƐ (2023–2026), launched in partnership with Middlesex University London and West University of Timișoara.

The techno-aesthetic experience has been tested with approximately 450 children in Grades 4 and 5 of primary school. The experience allows children, working in small groups, to “enter” an aesthetic virtual environment (a “painting”) created in 3D and accessed using sensor-equipped goggles and a joystick.

The environment is specifically designed around the theme of Gaia Earth and presents two different virtual spaces: a mountain and its surrounding natural habitat (external environment) and, at a second level, the cave inside the mountain (internal environment).

Children explore the environment in order to search for clues related to the theme of sustainability and discuss their transscalar implications in groups (external environment), and to reflect on the specific relationship between trans-scalar sustainability and AI (internal environment). This reflection is also carried out through interaction with a humanoid robot integrated with AI.