The current Italian educational context shows a growing interest in the inclusion of robots and robotic tools in classes of all levels. The Ministry of Education is promoting an important awareness-raising and economic investment effort, through the National Digital School Plan, for the progressive inclusion of digital tools in school structures and educational and teaching practices. For this reason, it is important to know and understand the potential of the main technological tools, how to use them appropriately so that they are functional to the learning processes of students and support the activities of the teaching staff, promoting, among other things, inclusiveness and support for students. This near future poses new challenges to schools, which have been taken up by the Research Center on the Theory of Mind (CeRiToM) of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, composed of a group of researchers of developmental and educational psychologists.

 

CeRiToM seeks to respond to new social and cultural demands through its twenty-year experience in the study of the development of social skills (Theory of Mind, empathy, prosociality, fairness and others) and combines this tradition with the innovation resulting from more than five years of studies of the psychological components involved in human-robot interaction, with particular attention to child-robot interaction. In addition to research, over the years CeRiToM has structured, thanks to the use of different robotic platforms, interventions and laboratories for classes of different levels. Given this research and application background, the Center represents an important interlocutor for institutes and schools of all levels interested in knowing how to use and integrate these new technological tools into educational and teaching practices.