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Few systematic studies describe rehabilitation trainings for upper limb in diplegic children with cerebral palsy (CP), who - especially once grown up - are often not considered as a target for rehabilitation interventions.In this pilot study, we describe the details and the effectiveness of an intensive, technology assisted intervention for upper limb.The treatment combines the utilization of Armeo® Spring with a training focused on hand/finger fluency and dexterity in a pre-post treatment experimental design.Participants were ten school-aged children (mean age 11.2) with bilateral CP and diplegia, attending mainstream schools.Participants underwent 40 therapy sessions in four weeks. Armeo® Spring measures, standardized motor and perceptual outcome indexes, as well as everyday life indicators were utilized to assess the effect of the intervention.Upper limb coordination, fluency and quality of movements mainly of hands and fingers significantly improved, with a good transferability to everyday life also in areas not specifically trained, such as self-care abilities and mobility. Probably due to the visual feedback provided by the virtual reality setting (which was all in one the context, the incentive and the product of activities), perceptual abilities significantly improved, too.Our study suggests the importance of intervention on upper limb even in milder CP diplegic forms and in relatively grown-up children. The possibility of modification at least partially relies on learning processes that are active all along development and benefit from stimulation.Though further studies with control groups and follow-up perspective are needed to confirm, new technologies offer interesting possibilities to be integrated into new evidence-based rehabilitation models.

Arts-based approaches and languages are valuable resources for the field of education, with the potential to enhance both educational work [10] and educational research [2]. In educational research specifically, Arts-Based Research Methods (ABR) [1], [3] – understood here as a range of approaches that recognize the artistic process itself as a mode of inquiry – may usefully be adopted alongside or in combination with other research methodologies. However, implementing such approaches requires specific competence in both art-based languages and research methods. In this paper, we present a project entitled the Arts-based Research-Global Classroom, a training course designed to provide PhD students and early career researchers with the knowledge and skills they need to deploy ABR methods in educational settings. The course is jointly delivered by the University of Milan-Bicocca and Drexel University, Florida. The concept is that of a learning laboratory, where students are given the opportunity to critically and reflectively discuss and evaluate perspectives, philosophical positions, and research questions that can lead to the design of collaborative research projects using art-based research methods. The course takes place over eight monthly sessions, each lasting around three hours. Part of the sessions takes the form of workshops based on artistic practices such as collage, assemblage, dance, drawing, and small group work.

The use of 3D digitizing tools is becoming the base for subject-specific products, such as the orthopaedic production process of orthoses and prostheses. This paper aims at comparing the metrological behaviour of low-cost devices (Kinect 1 and 2 by Microsoft, Structure Sensor by Occipital) and high-resolution active sensors (O&P Scan by Rodin4D, NextEngine Ultra HD, Konica Minolta Vivid 9i, GOM ATOS II 400 and Artec Leo) for the survey of human body parts. A calibrated flat plane and a test-field composed of eight calibrated spheres of different radii and placed at different heights were used to evaluate the standard quality parameters (flatness, probing errors in form and size and the standard deviation) for each device as recommended by the VDI/VDE 2634 guidelines. Subsequently, three different parts of a mannequin were surveyed as samples of human body parts. The results demonstrated the higher accuracy of fixed devices with respect to handheld ones, among which Artec Leo and Structure Sensor provided a satisfying level of accuracy for the orthopaedic application. Moreover, the handheld devices enabled performing a fast reconstruction of the mannequin parts in about 20 s, which is acceptable for a person that has to remain as still as possible. For this reason, the Structure Sensor was further tested with five motion approaches which identified that smooth motion provides the lowest deviation and higher reliability. The work demonstrated the appropriateness of handheld devices for the orthopaedic application requirements in terms of speed, accuracy and costs.

BACKGROUND: The use of robotic technologies in pediatric rehabilitation has seen a large increase, but with a lack of a comprehensive framework about their effectiveness. OBJECTIVE: An Italian Consensus Conference has been promoted to develop recommendations on these technologies: definitions and classification criteria of devices, indications and limits of their use in neurological diseases, theoretical models, ethical and legal implications. In this paper, we present the results for the pediatric age. METHODS: A systematic search on Cochrane Library, PEDro and PubMed was performed. Papers published up to March 1st, 2020, in English, were included and analyzed using the methodology of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine in Oxford, AMSTAR2 and PEDro scales for systematic reviews and RCT, respectively. RESULTS: Some positives aspects emerged in the area of gait: an increased number of children reaching the stance, an improvement in walking distance, speed and endurance. Critical aspects include the heterogeneity of the studied cases, measurements and training protocols. CONCLUSION: Many studies demonstrate the benefits of robotic training in developmental age. However, it is necessary to increase the number of trials to achieve greater homogeneity between protocols and to confirm the effectiveness of pediatric robotic rehabilitation.

l presente contributo si propone di esplorare e riflettere, da una prospettiva pedagogica, sulla casa come luogo di educazione per le bambine e i bambini che la abitano attraverso la prospettiva offerta dall’emergenza pandemica in corso. Nella prima infanzia la dimora della famiglia rappresenta il luogo entro il quale il bambino comincia a prendere coscienza di sé, e a esistere proprio a partire dallo spazio della casa. L’emergenza COVID-19 ha imposto un ritorno forzato alle mura domestiche portando a ripensare il ruolo della casa.Si intende, pertanto, condividere alcune riflessioni peda-gogiche a partire dai risultati di una ricerca qualitativa (parte del progetto Europeo Erasmus+ DEPCIP) condotta durante il lockdown di marzo-maggio 2020 e volta a comprendere l’impatto che un periodo prolungato di confinamento ha avuto sull’ambiente fa-miliare. Il contributo si basa su una ricerca quali-quantitativa (Ted-dlie & Tasshakori, 2006), condotta attraverso l’intervista semi-strutturata Computer Assisted Web Interview (CAWI). Circa 1000 genitori provenienti dai Paesi coinvolti nel progetto sono stati raggiunti, di cui 400 italiani. Lo studio ha inoltre indagato le relazioni con gli spazi domestici e pubblici, mostrando come l’isolamento abbia provocato una ridefinizione delle “geografie di casa” delle famiglie (Blunt & Varley, 2004). A partire dai risultati di ricerca il presente paper rifletterà sulla complessità dei significati di casa che si sono andati attraversando nel corso di questo periodo emergenziale e delle sue ricadute sul piano educativo.

This paper describes the journey of a group of six international arts-based researchers who convened in 2019 at the ECQI for a Gamechanger event. The goal was to create a transdisciplinary and transglobal group advocating for the visibility, accessibility, and valuation of Arts-Based Research (ABR). The mission was driven by the desire to contribute to the understanding of underlying beyond-words human intersubjective phenomena and resulting collective behaviors that influence our world but elude more traditional research methods. Conceptualized within an historical and contemporary socio-political context of turbulence, oppression, and inequity, the aspiration was that ABR might transcend the usual rhetoric exposing the trauma and toxicity while enhancing empathic, compassionate, and meaningful social discourse essential to creative reformative social justice. Thus, the Arts-Based Research (ABR) Global Consortium was formed. With the formation of our consortium and the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we decided to begin our first research project “Sustaining Life on Earth: Arts-Based Responses to the Lived Experience of COVID-19”, which was initiated in 2020 and completed in 2022. Nineteen individuals volunteered to participate as co-researchers, alongside the six member core team, submitting their arts-based and narrative responses to the project. The core team guiding the project collected and organized the submissions while simultaneously entering into an immersive, iterative, dynamic arts-based and dialogic process with the data and each other. In these immersive processes, we considered a priori themes of emotional impact, social framing, and aesthetic power of the art and narrative data as well as opening to emergent themes. Analysis included narrative and sensorial-based coding, responsive art making, collaborative and individual multi-genre memos, and reflections on all submissions. The final result of the project is an artsbased and performative piece using video and interactive gallery venues. The arts-based results of this project captured the sensory, embodied, and emotional experiences of the evolving phases of the pandemic which resonated with the co-researchers and multiple audiences. These phases include initial anxiety and panic; reflection and creativity; and resilience. The results of the project were presented in arts-based form at the ECQI in 2022. In this presentation, we invited attendees on our journey to walk with us through the innovative conceptualization, construction, methodological practices, collaborative and individual reflections, analysis, and final synthesis processes of this project.

The paper aims to present a curriculum for a parent training course on preventing violence against children (VAC). The training course was developed into a multi-site cross-national project framework involving five European countries (Italy, Turkey, Greece, Lithuania, and Spain). A needs analysis was conducted in each local context by using semi-structured in-depth interviews. Sixty-two parents have been reached, and the interviews were analyzed using a bottom-up exploratory research approach and thematic analysis. The meta-synthesis of the data highlighted the need for standardized cultural- sensitive training programs based on more information about child development and VAC and strategies to address children's behaviors positively. According to the needs analysis, four modules (M) were designed: Information on children's rights and protection (M1), Self-reflection: parental perception and children protection (M2), Positive parenting and relational skills (M3), and Conclusion and assessment (M4). The contribution will offer an example of curriculum design for the prevention of VAC to help to disseminate and promote a new awareness on the topic and the importance of supporting parents as a first step in the prevention of VAC.

The United Nations Decade on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) expanded the epistemological and methodological debate on sustainability and education. Currently, ESD encompasses a broad spectrum of socio-political issues (including global citizenship and social justice), while “place-bonding” is seen as key to fostering citizen advocacy in local communities and enhancing “children’s lived experiences of local issues”. Herein, we emphasize both the political and the pedagogical value of this perspective, arguing that ESD bears the potential to overcome “universal vs. individual” tensions and dichotomies. Our line of reasoning is that the “capabilities approach” (CA), although it did not originally focus on children, can offer a useful theoretical framework in support of ESD, thanks to its multidimensional nature and focus on the concrete agency of individuals. Accordingly, we see the CA as playing a key role in bridging the gap between universal prescriptions, which disregard the specificity of the actors involved, as well as the peculiar nature of their social environment and its context-specific needs or constraints. We supplement this theoretical discussion by presenting “The Flying Carpet”, an ongoing community-based education project that has elicited the active involvement of over one hundred 11–13 year old students in an urban regeneration project in a municipal district of Milan.

Official records of children’s progress (summative assessment) are kept at three points in the EYFS: Progress check at the age 2, Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA) from September 2021 and Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP). These records are legal requirements and guidance is provided on how they are to be completed. As discussed in Chapters 9 and 10, however, formative assessments are also central and ongoing and should be an integral part of the learning and teaching process (DfE, 2017a). In ECEC, however, the collection of information (either for the child or the pedagogical practices) that is not part of the legal requirements of the curriculum framework has a long tradition. This chapter discusses this documentation which differs in nature from the legal records and is characterised by a pedagogical style that allows the reader to authentically share the educational experience. In the contemporary debate, especially since the end of the last century and inspired by the Reggio Emilia philosophical approach, all documentation concerning the education process is defined as pedagogical (Dahlberg et al., 1997). Pedagogical documentation is discussed as the recursive cycle of observation, design, action, assessment and of the documentation itself. In this sense, pedagogical documentation relies on specific competencies possessed by practitioners, whose role is to observe and identify the essence of educational experience and to select the aspects that are core to understanding this experience and why it may be considered educational.

Arts-based approaches and languages are valuable resources for the field of education, with the potential to enhance both educational work (Zuccoli, 2020) and educational research (Biffi, Zuccoli, 2019). In educational research specifically, Arts-Based Research Methods (ABR) (Baron, Eisner, 2012; Cole, Knowles, 2008) – understood here as a range of approaches that recognize the artistic process itself as a mode of inquiry – may usefully be adopted alongside or in combination with other research methodologies. However, implementing such approaches requires specific competence in both art-based languages and research methods. In this paper, we present a project entitled the Arts-based Research-Global Classroom, a training course designed to provide PhD students and early career researchers with the knowledge and skills they need to deploy ABR methods in educational settings. The course is jointly delivered by the University of Milan-Bicocca and Drexel University, Florida. The concept is that of a learning laboratory, where students are given the opportunity to critically and reflexively discuss and evaluate perspectives, philosophical positions, and research questions that can lead to the design of collaborative research projects using art-based research methods. The course takes place over eight monthly sessions, each lasting around three hours. Part of the sessions takes the form of workshops based on artistic practices such as collage, assemblage, dance, drawing, and small group work.

This paper describes a dynamic multistage game in which sustainability is a value that is shared between companies and stakeholders in a competitive market. The game solution could move from a Nash equilibrium to a higher equilibrium, the MES equilibrium, because of the presence of stakeholders who influence the choice and the set of sustainable strategies. Stakeholders provide feedback to companies (by way of awards, ratings, rankings, rebukes, etc.) at every stage of the game. Positive feedback gives a company the chance to expand its business opportunities, leveraging on good reputation, customer loyalty, operational risk mitigation, resilience, employees' cohesion, etc. The interaction between companies and stakeholders also allows companies to seize market opportunities (e.g., supplying sustainable products for responsible customers, sustainable investments for investors, etc.). The sustainability game demonstrates how sustainability can engage the economic system in a market shift.

The pandemic made childcare a major challenge for parents globally, both in the short and longer term. In this context, it is plausible that emotions and general distress experienced by parents have had an impact at multiple levels in their relationships with their children, potentially increasing their vulnerability. The present study focuses on the analysis of the prevailing emotions of Italian parents during the first lockdown, investigating possible associations with personal perceptions of well-being and readiness to cope with the emergency situation. 319 parents (93% mothers) answered to a semi-structured computer assisted web interview (CAWI; Kurniawan, 2018). The answers showed that parents went through intense emotions, both negative, like worry and anxiety (39.2% named only negative emotions and 32% negative emotions as prevalent) and positive emotional, like hope, serenity and joy (7.8% indicated only positive emotions and 9.5% positive emotions as prevalent). Parents’ perceived positive emotions have proved to be important resources linked to a higher level of personal well-being and the perception of being adequately equipped to deal with an emergency. Emotion management emerged as a key area affecting parents’ way of relating with their children during the strict lockdown: parents declared their need to be supported in building a positive emotional relationship with their children in a stressing situation, highlighting a difficulty in cope with and communicate their own emotionality.

The chapter offers practical examples of what pedagogical documentation could entail when used in a research project. In this chapter we show how pedagogical documentation can be used as a methodology with arts-informed methods as a play based approach for participatory research with children. Thus, this chapter aims to explore: - the nature of pedagogical documentation for capturing the educational experiences of children; - the nature of pedagogical documentation as a methodology for participatory research; - the use of arts in research as a method of involving children in their meaning-making that words sometimes cannot achieve.

Each year an estimated one billion children (one out of two children worldwide) suffer some form of physical, sexual or psychological violence or neglect (Hillis, Mercy, Amobi, & Kress, 2016). Being a victim of violence in childhood has lifelong impacts on education, health, and well-being. Exposure to violence can lead to poor academic performance due to cognitive, emotional, and social problems (WHO, 2019). The right of the child to freedom from all forms of violence is affirmed by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, in its General Comment No. 13 (UNCRC, 2011). Moreover, the Sustainable Development Goals contain a clear call to eliminate violence against children, most explicitly in Target 16.2 (UN, 2015). Many efforts have been made globally to achieve these goals. Schools have been identified as one of the crucial contexts for conducting violence prevention efforts. They offer an important space where children, teachers and educators can learn and adopt pro-social behaviours that can contribute to preventing violence (WHO, et al., 2016). Teachers can play a key role, helping to build a “violence-free world” (UNESCO, WHO, UNICEF, End Violence Against Children, 2020), both by promoting positive relationships and by identifying signs of violence early. In fact, while international strategies provide a necessary framework for the promotion and protection of children's rights, it is the people who can make a difference in the prevention and detection of violence against children (Biffi, 2018). Based on these premises, the paper will focus on how teacher training can help prevent, report and address violence against children. Teachers are often not trained on this: some of them know the contents, but have doubts about how to deal with certain situations. Teachers should learn what to do with students who have gone through a traumatic experience because children choose someone who can see and recognize them (Miller, 1979, En. transl. 1995; Miller, 1980, En. transl. 1983). To be able to really recognize the child, a training course with teachers is necessary, to raise awareness and help them see the signals that children send (The Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action, End Violence Against Children, UNICEF, WHO, 2020). This paper, through literature and presentation of a training course with teachers in Italy, will offer a pedagogical reflection on teacher training in the prevention, reporting and addressing of violence against children, in order to start building a common shared strategy.

As stated in Article 29 of the UNCRC, the goal of education is to prepare children for a responsible life in a free society. However, recent international agendas and strategy documents (such as the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development) have emphasised the need to develop a more equal and just – more so than a freer – society, while continuing to identify education as a key pillar of human development. In light of this background, the present chapter offers a theoretical analysis of the role of education in human social development, exploring possible connections between children’s rights studies and the capabilities approach. It refers to the terms of the UNCRC to suggest that children’s capabilities need to be conceptualised on their own terms.

O presente artigo objetiva realizar uma reflexão pedagógica sobre os significados de infância e democracria ao longo dos tempos, considerando a Convenção das Nações Unidas sobre os Direitos da Criança (CNUDC) como um marco no pensamento destes conceitos, pensando-os, especificamente, como ponto culminante, ponto de virada e ponto de partida. A infância é uma construção sociocultural que se origina de um movimento duplo: a construção adulta da infância por meio de educação e política e a maneira como as crianças de carne e osso participam do cotidiano de suas famílias e comunidades, contribuindo para definir o que uma criança pode fazer. A primeira seção do artigo explora o movimento duplo mencionado da Idade Média ao século XX, preparando as bases para o desenvolvimento da Convenção das Nações Unidas sobre os Direitos da Criança em 1989, que liderou uma mudança no modo como a infância é concebida, uma mudança que tem suas raízes no reconhecimento do que as crianças de carne e osso estavam fazendo e sendo ‘silenciosamente’ por eras, por isso é um ponto culminante nesse sentido. O artigo, então, aprofunda a análise da CNUDC, concentrando-se especificamente em como os direitos de participação oferecem uma perspectiva específica sobre democracia, compreendida como um modo de vida que precisa ser aprendido também pelas crianças. O artigo finaliza com uma reflexão sobre o futuro da democracia visto na Agenda 2030 da Organização das Nações Unidas para o Desenvolvimento Sustentável, a qual se baseia na própria CNUDC. The present contribution offers a pedagogical reflection on the meanings of childhood and democracy through the ages, taking the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as a culmination point, a turning point and a starting point for considering these concepts. Childhood is a socio-cultural construct originating from a twofold movement: the adult construction of childhood through education and politics and the way children in flesh and bone participate in the everyday life of their families and communities, contributing to defining what a child can do and be in a certain society. The first section of the paper explores the mentioned twofold movement from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, preparing the foundations for the development of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1989. The UNCRC led to a shift in the way childhood is conceived whose roots lie in recognizing what children in flesh and bone had “quietly” been doing and being for ages, so in this sense it is a culmination point. The paper then deepens the analysis of the UNCRC, specifically focusing on how the participation rights offer a particular perspective on democracy, understood as a way of life that needs to be learnt. The paper ends with a reflection on the future of democracy as can be seen in the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development which is based on the UNCRC itself.

The impact of current trends in technology, digitalization and mass media on our global culture raises questions regarding the responsibility and ethics of research decisions in contemporary social and health sciences. Embedded in the dominant paradigms, these trends subtly affect our worldviews, our valuation of the human condition, and the nature of socio-political discourse. In such critical post normal times (SARDAR, 2009) radical imagination (HAIVEN & KHASNABISH, 2014) and epistemic activism, embracing non-dominant modes of knowledge production in the social and health sciences, becomes a necessity. Arts-based research (ABR) is resonant with the onto-epistemological perspectives and methodologies necessary to challenge and disrupt current unilateral and hegemonic paradigms underlying decaying societal and geo-political constructs. In this article, we advocate for the development of a global network of ABR scholars and stakeholders invoking a radical imaginative philosophy and arts-based research methodologies as an approach to social activism and epistemological change., Die Wichtigkeit aktueller Trends in Technologie, Digitalisierung und Massenmedien für die globale Kultur führt zu Fragen nach der Verantwortlichkeit und Ethik forscherischer Entscheidungen in den Sozial- und Gesundheitswissenschaften. Eingebettet in die jeweils dominanten Paradigmen affizieren diese Trends subtil unsere Weltsicht, unsere Werte und den Charakter sozio-politischer Diskurse. In diesen kritischen post-normalen Zeiten (SARDAR 2009) werden radikale Imagination (HAIVEN & KHASNABISH 2014) und epistemischer Aktivismus, verbunden mit nicht-dominanten Weisen der Wissensproduktion, zu einer Notwendigkeit. Kunstbasierte Forschung (KBF) beinhaltet onto-epistemologische Perspektiven und Methodologien, die erforderlich sind, um die gegenwärtigen unilateralen und hegemonialen Paradigmen herauszufordern und zu stören, die den überkommenen gesellschaftlichen und geo-politischen Konstrukten unterliegen. In diesem Beitrag vertreten wir die Etablierung eines globalen Netzwerks von KBF-Wissenschaftler*innen und Stakeholdern und die Nutzung einer radikal-imaginativen Philosophie und von kunstbasierten Verfahren als Ausgangspunkte für sozialen Aktivismus und einen epistemologischen Wechsel.

Low-cost 3D sensors are nowadays widely diffused and many different solutions are available on the market. Some of these devices were developed for entertaining purposes, but are used also for acquisition and processing of different 3D data with the aim of documentation, research and study. Given the fact that these sensors were not developed for this purpose, it is necessary to evaluate their use in the capturing process. This paper shows a preliminary research comparing the Kinect 1 and 2 by Microsoft, the Structure Sensor by Occipital and the O&P Scan by Rodin4D in a medical scenario (i.e. human body scans). In particular, these sensors were compared to Minolta Vivid 9i, chosen as reference because of its higher accuracy. Different test objects were analysed: a calibrated flat plane, for the evaluation of the systematic distance error for each device, and three different parts of a mannequin, used as samples of human body parts. The results showed that the use of a certified flat plane is a good starting point in characterizing the sensors, but a complete analysis with objects similar to the ones of the real context of application is required. For example, the Kinect 2 presented the best results among the low-cost sensors on the flat plane, while the Structure Sensor was more reliable on the mannequin parts.

In early childhood education and care services, documentation is seen as an instrument for ‘giving children voice’ and for engaging children in their educational process (Formosinho and Pascal 2016; Kroll and Meier 2018; Robertson et al. 2017). At the same time, documentation plays a key role within the decision-making process in which children should be allowed to participate: it is the space where the adults’ decisions are made and shared, whereas within the child protection system, it remains more likely to reflect the adults’ voice (Caldwell et al. 2019). Thus, documentation, especially when in written alphabetic form, illustrates the power of writing and written text (Biffi 2019b). Given that alternative care services are institutional contexts in which the exercise of power and control is inevitable and determined by a given ‘dispositif’ as defined by Michael Foucault (1975), documentation can represent a strategy for giving voice to children or—on the contrary—a strategy for objectivating them, and thus preventing them from authentically engaging with their own care plans. This paper, by drawing on the different meanings held by documentation in ECEC contexts, in terms of viewing it as ‘equipped with agentic power’ (Alasuutari and Kelle 2015) reflects on the meanings of (pedagogical) documentation in alternative care settings, as a transitional space between ‘being spoken for’ and ‘speaking for oneself’, in light of a rights-based and pedagogical framework. A further aim of the paper is to explore possible approaches enabling children to participate in the documentation process, focusing on the practices able to involve children in the writing and reading of documentation concerning themselves.

The paper aims at exploring the risk of violence underneath some small and silent prac- tices (made by gestures, and words) within educational contexts, which can reasonably be considered as part of the general framework for corporal punishments (UN Com- mittee on the Rights of the Child, 2006). The attention is, indeed, focused on those daily practices – connected with the main routines, such as lunchtime, playtime, and the practices related to personal hygiene – which have a specific educational value in terms of respect and recognition of the dignity of the child. The essay therefore reconsid- ers these typologies of smallest gestures from the wider perspective of violence against children (Hamby, Grych, 2013), in order to discuss the connections that exist between violence and education (Biffi, Macinai, 2020), where humiliation and denigration of the child is considered as part of an unacceptable punishment that demonstrates how thin the border between violence and education can be (Schermi, 2016). Finally, the paper will take stock of the path towards the elimination of all corporal punishment, with a specific focus on the role of teachers training in preventing and fighting violence against children, beginning from the sharing of a coherent and respectful educational style, be- tween family and school., Rivista Italiana di Educazione Familiare, Vol. 16 No. 1 (2020): n°1 gennaio-giugno 2020

This paper aims at highlighting the role of arts, referring specifically to graphics, in creating participatory learning experiences for young children and as a mean for professional development of teachers, focusing in particular on the use of arts in pedagogical documentation. Graphics are viewed as a reflective practice that can generate significant learning and development experiences for both children and teachers. These reflections are contextualized by presenting the first experiences and considerations from an ongoing cross-national research, that involves young children (3–6) and their teachers in their educational services called “Inside Outside Children’s perspective in ECECC”. To this end, the Italian pilot case study is particularly meaningful: children have been involved in a participatory learning experience, thanks to the use of drawing, aimed at exploring the meanings of the concept of ‘Inside/Outside’ in its various dimensions – spatial, social and referring to the self. Furthermore, teachers have also explored the theme thanks to the use of collage and started reflecting on the potentialities of this methodology as a professional development tool. The objective is to widen the reflection to the use of artistic languages in pedagogical documentation, to enhance learning in children and teachers.

Within the debate around hate speech, the paper aims at ex-amining the role of words within the educational relationship, ap-proaching the risk educators, specifically teachers towards stu-dents, have of using – awarely or unawarely – words of hate. The chosen perspective from which the theme will be ana-lyzed, is the one of the international strategies, in defense of chil-dren, which, under the label of corporal punishment include the use of any kind of punishment – not only physical – that aims at de-grading, belittling, humiliating, menacing, frightening or ridiculing the child (UN, CRC, General Comment n. 8(2008), CRC/C/GC/8). This specification sharpens the centrality of the pedagogical as-pect of the issue: it connects words in themselves with the intention-ality of who speaks them and with the sense the receiver gives them. Benning from a reflection on the role of words in the educa-tional relationship, it will be possible to approach a pedagogical analysis which will question the pedagogical implications of hate speech by the teacher, as well as the conditions and contexts that allow the perpetration of hate speech, more or less consciously, by adults that have educational roles and task