In our multicultural and digital society, the educational systems of EU Countries are facing the troublesome challenge to respond to emerging current needs such as: embrace classrooms with students from different cultural/linguistic background, reinforce motivation and the relation between knowledge and life experience, engage vulnerable groups (as migrants, Special Education Needs - SEN, etc.), involve all actors within a shared educational path, exploit the potentials of new media, foster innovative collaborative and peer learning practices. Based on this complex context, the project "INCLUDED - INclusive ChiLdhood edUcation supporteD by multimEdia and Digital storytelling" aims at developing a set of guidelines / recommendations (pedagogical approach, methodology, spaces, tools, best practices) with related competence framework and training guidelines for teachers to design and foster inclusive activities and practices through tangible Digital Storytelling (T-DST) strategies in Childhood Education (primary school age, 6-10). The action is conceived as a contribution to nurturing social inclusion as well as opening up education to innovative digital practices to enhance quality in childhood education, being – within the others benefits – the strengthening of teaching profiles and the contrast to ESL and disadvantage within the EU2020 strategy and lifelong learning. Given these premises, the INCLUDED proposal leverages on the pedagogical paradigm of DST to elaborate this framework to address the needs of inclusion in childhood, promoting a participatory action-research that builds upon the T-DST paradigm at primary school age for the following goals: ● Lay the foundation of a curriculum framework and related guidelines for educators in order to implement such methodology for the goal of media literacy, by o Defining a training reference framework for educators; o Designing and implementing a training model and practices for educators; o Designing and implementing experimental activities in different narrative-based educational settings; ● Make a scientific assessment of the activities on specific research focuses related to educational outcomes. The proposal target groups are represented by: ● Primary school teachers (from at least 3 European Countries) who will attend the INCLUDED’s training course on inclusive practices with T-DST and who will be involved in the educational experimental activities, supported and supervised by academic researchers. At least a total of 60 teachers will be involved. ● Children aged 6-10 years (primary school) that will be involved in T-DST inclusive educational practices by their trained teachers. At least 840 children will be involved in experimental activities. The proposal Intellectual Outputs (IOs) are: IO1 - TEACHER TRAINING COURSE IO2 - EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENTATION IO3 - SCIENTIFIC EVALUATION IO4 - GUIDELINES ON TANGIBLE DST FOR INCLUSIVE EDUCATION Briefly, the macro-task of the project plan are: 1° year (M1-M12): SoA research, teacher training course, design of educational activities 2° year (M12-M30): Research and experimentation of activities in school settings / scientific observation in parallel 3° year (M30-36): Documentation, analysis of practices, development of guidelines In relation to the objectives, the project will take advantage of the collaboration of an interdisciplinary and international school partnership, supervised by a group of researchers experienced in projects devoted to the research and experimentation of innovative digitally supported practices in education, with a special focus on children inclusion/SENs. In this way, it will be possible to enact this action research on a European dimension, to compare the results between different institutions and cultural backgrounds, in view of a better exploitation of results within the EU roadmap towards the improvement of quality in school services. The desired impact foresees the following: ● Enhancing capability of schools to handle inclusion, ESL and disadvantage ● Promoting the innovation in regional/national/EU policies ● Enhancing teachers’ skills and competences and reuse of the INCLUDED training model among primary school teachers in Europe
The project objectives are: Lay the foundation of a curriculum framework and related guidelines for educators implement such methodologies for the goal of media literacy by defining a training reference framework for educators designing and implementing a training model and practices for educators, designing and implementing experimental activities in different narrative based educational settings; The project's aims are to define guidelines for school in the european community focused on inclusion through the use of Digital and Tangible storytelling as a methodology for an olistic learning approach. The instrument that involves different learning languages and talents is the i-theatre: a tools consisting in a scanner, a work surface around which 5 children can cooperate, data storage to scan children drawings and to record voices and sounds. Experimentation and scientific research has taken place in finnish, italian and spanish schools and the data have been processed by UEM and UNITN supported by CL.
The project has been presented to work on Inclusion through the Storytelling traditional and digital one, focused on the importance of Storytelling in the learning process and in the inclusion of all students and of different learning styles at school.Through Storytelling children have the opportunity to enlarge their vocabulary, to express feelings and build identity.Storytelling has very ancient origins but nowadays there are new instruments to involve children and to work all together in a positive environment. The TDST approach shows that children are more involved using different languages and tools, they can express themselves using drawings, music, oral skills and using technologies they can improve their vocabulary, their social skills and their confidence feeling part of a group, supporting each others, expressing their talents.