Enhancing Engagement in Learners with Special Educational Needs Through Physical and Immersive Musical Toys: A Mixed-Methods Comparative Study Protocol

Musical play offers learners with Special Educational Needs (SEN) an immediate way to act on, perceive, and reorganize a learning environment through sound. This study protocol proposes a randomized, counterbalanced, within-participant mixed-methods comparison of two functionally matched forms of musical interaction: physical/tangible musical toys and virtual/immersive musical environments controlled through touch, gesture, or movement. The study is diagnosis-inclusive and is intended for school-aged learners with documented SEN across heterogeneous neurodevelopmental, sensory, motor, communication, and combined support profiles; eligibility is defined by functional access rather than diagnosis alone. Engagement is treated as a multidimensional process encompassing behavioral participation and persistence, emotional involvement, and cognitive-agentic investment in exploration, choice, and task completion. The methodological novelty lies in matching the two conditions at the level of musical function and adult mediation while translating both tangible interactions and digital traces into a common event ontology. This design reduces the measurement asymmetry that often favors digitally instrumented environments and enables within-learner comparison across media. Mixed-effects models will estimate the primary condition contrast, whereas access-profile moderation will be treated as exploratory. Educator ratings and qualitative Framework Method analysis will contextualize individual response patterns. No empirical results are reported at the protocol stage. The protocol is intended to support the collection of pedagogically meaningful and computationally traceable evidence for the design of accessible serious games, digital musical instruments, and hybrid physical–digital learning experiences in inclusive education.