Conference Program

In recent years, well-being at school has been, and continues to be, a pedagogical and educational priority. In line with the objectives of Agenda 2030, it is necessary and urgent to identify barriers, facilitators and methodologies that can guarantee equitable, inclusive and quality education. With this in mind, this study aims to explore the effects of integrated theatre workshops on the wellbeing of pupils, with and without Special Educational Needs (SEN), in the second cycle of primary school in suburban contexts. The study is the result of a collaboration with the Laboratorio Teatrale Integrato Piero Gabrielli, a multidisciplinary organisation based in the Lazio region that runs annual theatre workshops with an integrated and inclusive approach. The research design adopted is quantitative, with experimental groups and pre/post intervention surveys using the Questionari per la valutazione del benessere scolastico e identificazione dei fattori di rischio (Tobia & Marzocchi, 2024). The sample consists of pupils from four schools selected through a public call for applications by the Teatro di Roma, for a total of eight classes belonging to the second cycle of primary school. The identification of this target group was based on two reasons: on the one hand, evidence in the literature suggests that wellbeing tends to decline with the start of secondary school, while on the other hand, we wanted to highlight the intrinsic multimodal and inclusive nature of theatre workshops in peripheral schools, which are often characterised by a high number of pupils with SEN. The data analysis involved the use of descriptive statistics to detect any variations in the overall scores of all the subscales examined; in addition, statistical correlations between the items and the relevant subscales were performed using Pearson’s index. The results show significant changes in all subscales, albeit with differences and methodological limitations typical of pilot studies. However, these results suggest some future prospects that can be outlined to investigate the relationship between the artistic, educational and inclusive dimensions more rigorously.