DEVELOPING PERSPECTIVE TAKING SKILL THROUGH EDU-GAMING: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY

Several researchers have shown that edugames may be considered as an innovative educational tool to promote learners’ acquisition of basic and specialized skills (Aiello et al., 2016; Ghanouni et al., 2021; Lau, Wang, & Wang, 2020; Maliverni et al., 2017; Sibilio, 2017; Vallefuoco et al., 2022). Nonetheless, only few educational tools have been expressly created and studied to develop Perspective Taking (PT) skill. This is surprising when considering that PT skill represents a milestone for the development of several competencies, including those in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and socio-emotional competencies (McCurdy et al., 2020; Grimaldi, 2019). Indeed, a deficit in PT is considered a vulnerability factor for cognitive, emotional and social developmental domains (Viola, Zappalà, & Sibilio, 2022). Thus, it is deemed necessary to develop resources that educators may adopt in order to foster the acquisition of PT skill since childhood, especially in case of deficits in socio-emotional skills or autism spectrum disorders. In Italy, Schoolcam (Di Tore, Aiello, Sibilio, & Berthoz, 2020) has been created to serve this purpose. To date, the edugame has been tested both with adults and children to explore possible relationships between the scores obtained when using Schoolcam and those measured using other validated tests, such us the PTSOT test. Users are assessed on three tasks: the first two assess PT skill at two distinct levels of difficulty. The third task assesses Mental Rotation Ability, defined as a skill which is partially independent of PT. Results confirmed that the edugame may be considered a reliable tool to assess the level of development of PT skill, but it also needed to undergo some modifications: users asked for more attractive avatars, one more activity was included to assess PT without social landmarks, everything was set to remotely interact with the edugame using tablets and pushbuttons (Di Tore et al., 2020). Based on these premises, the aim of this paper is that of exploring the impact of playing the new version of Schoolcam, called “Virtual Classroom”, on developing social and perspective taking skills through the identification of standard points for the edugame. This objective also moves from a research interest embedded in a larger project whose purpose is to explore how the use of this edugame may foster the development of the aforementioned skill in inclusive classrooms, also attended by learners with autism spectrum disorders, and socio pathological cases among adults (Di Tore et al., 2020; Viola, Zappalà, & Sibilio, 2022; Zappalà, Viola, & Aiello, 2022). The study involved a convenience sample of 116 future support teachers enrolled in the specialization course for educational support activities for pupils with disabilities at the University of Salerno. Data was examined for normality using percentile scores and descriptive statistics. Future studies will examine the possibility of using the tasks of the edugame as a training tool to favor the development of PT to investigate if the edugame may be used as an educational resource aimed at enhancing PT and socio-emotional skills.