PEARL project aim is to develop and validate an inclusive educational model that stimulates the growing of an empathic and emotional proximal learning educational environment based on group activities. The main experimental hypothesis is that an inclusive, empathic and emotional proximal learning environment can be fostered by educational group activities, using natural elements and educational robots.
The validation of PEARL model has been divided in 2 main phases:
A) Deep analysis of the impact of the facilitator elements (nature and robots) in the development of an inclusive and empathic proximal learning environment.
The partners have implemented the first experimental phase in one school per country, supervising selected teachers while they were implementing educational activities developed by the project’s experts. Practitioners in psycho-pedagogy have analysed the videorecordings of the experimental sessions, identifying the relational and communicational patterns, the natural behaviour of the children toward their classmates and the dynamic of inclusion and exclusion. The experts gave a professional, careful and precise analysis of the developmental, emotional, communicational and relational aspects of the experimental activities.
There have been identified 3 main experimental groups according the age of the children, each with 2 or 4 experimental scenarios:
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0-2 years old children:
– child paying alone with the teacher
– group of children playing together
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3-4 years old children:
– child playing alone with a robot
– 1 child playing alone without a robot
– 1 group of 5 children playing without a robot
– 1 group of 5 children playing with a robot
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5-6 years old children:
– child playing alone with a robot
– 1 child playing alone without a robot
– 1 group of 5 children playing without a robot
– 1 group of 5 children playing with a robot
The experimental activities and the assessment tools used during the first phase can be downloaded here:
B) Wider experimentation of the PEARL model. After the PEARL training course part of the involved teachers have implemented the experimental activities in their classes, self-collecting data through the observation sheets developed by the partnership.
There have been identified 2 main experimental groups according the age of the children, each with 2 experimental scenarios:
-
3-4 years old children:
– 1 group of 5 children playing without a robot
– 1 group of 5 children playing with a robot
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5-6 years old children:
– 1 group of 5 children playing without a robot
– 1 group of 5 children playing with a robot
For this second phase the validation, partners have translated the experimental activities explanationn and the assessment tools so that the teachers would have been independent in the implementation of the experimental session. The translated materials useful for the assessment (description of the activity and observation sheets) are available at the following links for all the interested teachers to be downloaded:
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