A research initiative on the construction of innovative environments for teaching and learning. Montessori and Munari based psycho-pedagogical insights in computers and human behavior for the “new school”

Italians children-students live a strong technological gap among different education instances: on the one hand, they are attending schools technologically still to the ‘80 years, on the other hand, they can rely on hyper-technological domestic-family environments where videogames, smartphones, internet are always available. In the school, all learnings take place under the supervision of the teacher that stimulates, directs and corrects these important steps in the basic training. On the contrary, in the domestic environment the presence of technology is increasingly pervasive. These new technologies cognitively stimulate the children, but they entertain the little ones often alone and without the participation and supervision of an adult audience. Thus, the technology gap results in a pedagogical clash among different educational instances and this is the “space” addressed by our research initiative whose objective is the construction of innovative teaching and learning environments for children between 3 and 6 years of age. The specific quantitative outcomes can be defined with respect to three main families of indicators: measures to detect the use of learning environments; indicators of the level of satisfaction and involvement of the various involved actors; real impact on the socio-cognitive development of children produced by the introduction of methodologies and technologies.