Conference Program

At the heart of the school experience lies the relationship between teaching and learning, which responds to students’ spontaneous need to explore, interpret, and understand the world around them. It is configured as a dynamic and participatory process that goes beyond the mere transmission of content, moving instead toward the active construction of meaning through experience and the conscious use of tools, including digital ones.

The progressive digitization of everyday environments has transformed patterns of social interaction and knowledge construction, involving children at increasingly early ages. In Italy, approximately one in three children between the ages of 6 and 10 (32.6%) uses a smartphone daily (ISTAT; Save the Children, 2023), prompting reflection on the educational responsibilities connected to technological mediation and the need to support children in developing critical and informed competencies. School remains one of the primary contexts in which students can acquire the essential skills required to participate fully in digital society (Vannini & McCleary, 2020). As highlighted in the National Digital School Plan, the challenge is to create the conditions for a learning process oriented toward cultural innovation and the enhancement of digital technologies, recognized as an “enabling tool, connector and driver of change” (MIUR, 2015). From this perspective, schools are called upon to configure themselves as spaces of “pedagogical connectivity” (Rivoltella, 2020), where technologies function as bridges among different actors and contribute to fostering a sense of belonging and shared participation.

Educational robotics in kindergarten and primary school assumes particular relevance. Its theoretical foundation is rooted in Papert’s constructionism, which emphasizes learning through making, in line with Dewey’s concept of learning by doing, valuing active experience and participation in knowledge construction processes. International literature highlights the potential of educational robotics in supporting disciplinary learning, fostering the development of competencies, social skills, and enhancing complex cognitive functions such as problem-solving and reasoning.

In this perspective, the experimental protocol promoted by the Observatory on Governance for Education to Cultural, Artistic and Landscape Heritage (OGEP3) of the Department of Humanities at the University of Naples Federico II involves the design of educational laboratories integrating social robots, zSpace technology, virtual reality viewers, cross-platform augmented reality applications, and holographic fans within arts-based learning pathways aimed at promoting education in cultural heritage and the languages of art.

The experimentation is structured as a study investigating the impact of integrating these devices on collaborative learning processes, levels of student engagement, and the development of cognitive and transversal skills. In line with international guidelines recognizing technological innovation as an opportunity to enhance the quality and equity of educational systems (UNESCO, 2023), the challenge is not merely to provide access to technological tools, but to build the organizational and cultural prerequisites that enable teachers to integrate them consciously into their teaching practices. The goal is to transform these tools into meaningful and sustainable learning opportunities, avoiding purely technical or reductive approaches.

Considering technologies as cognitive artifacts (Papert, 1980) within critical and contextually situated pedagogies makes it possible to promote an inclusive and participatory learning ecosystem.