Becoming Expert in Playing with Children with Disabilities. The LUDI Training School “Play and Toys for All”

The COST Action TD1309 LUDI “Play for Children with Disabilities” is a network of European practitioners and researchers who study and approach play from several disciplines (pedagogy, psychology, occupational therapy, sociology, engineering, industrial design, Human Technology Interaction, Information Communication and Technology, etc.). LUDI aims at granting children with disabilities the possibility to experience play for the sake of play, in inclusive contexts, as a crucial dimension of everyday life. To reach this goal, LUDI creates ad hoc knowledge and disseminates the existing best practices in the field of play for children with disabilities. The Training School “Play and Toys for All” is one of the tools adopted to fulfil this scope. This paper presents the first edition of the LUDI Training School and its characteristics: the theoretical assumptions about play and disabilities which it is based on; its main objectives; the methodology adopted, based on a multi-disciplinary and user-centred approach, with a balance between theoretical presentations and concrete experience; the contents; the evaluation process used to get feedback about the effectiveness and the appreciation of the initiative. Both trainers and trainees were asked to rate, through anonymous questionnaires, the effictiveness of the School in reaching its goals and in building up new knowledge about play and children with disabilities; the first results are reported.