It is always exciting to work with European partners on research projects.  I work at Nottingham Trent University and have been working on an Erasmus funded project: Mobile Pedagogical Assistant to develop meaningful pathways to personalised learning. The project addresses at its very core inclusive education, thus affecting and supporting every teacher in the European countries that ratified the UNCRPD 2008, as well as beyond Europe. The project will provide teachers and teacher educators with a toolset to develop innovative pedagogies, using a mobile games application.  Our partners are from Belgium, Bulgaria, Serbia, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.

To date we have collated and analysed 74 case studies and 90 interviews with teacher educators across the countries involved to develop a pedagogical framework, now available on the project web site.  The framework has informed the development of a mobile technology measuring the engagement and attention of learners with learning challenges in mainstream education; providing information to the teacher on appropriate pedagogical adaptations to planned learning content.

The mobile technology collects and analyses multi-modal data of engagement and attention via specifically developed computer.   The project draws on Swanson’s [1] signal detection theory.  The learner’s performance in the game (errors and reaction time) provides multisensory data (body posture, facial expression, gesture tracking, eye gaze, brain activity (EEG) and thermal data). Computer methods are then used to fuse the multisensory data, and to predict differing attention/engagement [2] to enable deep learning [3] and meaningful outcome [4]. The data is then sent to a Cloud and analysed to identify appropriate pedagogy to support the learner; this is then sent to the teacher via an App. Thus, promoting differentiation, reducing teacher time in planning and preparation, improving teacher and learner experience, leading to enhanced progression and a change in school’s practice.

This is an exciting project which will change practice in schools across Europe.  If you would like more information on the project you can access the project website at: https://pedagogics-pathway.eu/

 [1] L. Swanson, “Vigilance deficit in learning disabled children: a signal detection analysis,” J. Child Psychol. Psychiatry., vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 393–399, 1981.

[2] B. Carpenter “Engaging children with complex learning difficulties and disabilities in the Primary Classroom. 2011.

[3] D. H. Hargreaves, “A new shape for schooling?” 2006.

[4] B. Carpenter, “Disadvantaged, deprived and disabled, Special Children,” Special Children Magazine 193, pp. 42–45, Feb-2010.