Journal of Educational Cultural and Psychological Studies (ECPS Journal)

The 5 th International Seminar (June 5-6, 2015), as traditionally organized by the Journal of Educational, Cultural and American Psychological Studies, born in close thematic link with the theoretical approaches and procedural methods of research undertaken through the PRIN Project (2010-2011) «Educational Achievement, Social Inclusion and Cohesion: Innovative Strategies, ICT and Evaluation Models». The speakers and the researchers of the seven Italian universities participating in PRIN (Torino, Verona, Bologna Roma Tre, Roma Sapienza, Foggia, Palermo) were called to intervene on the possibility of identifying a connection between the research methodologies in education, the underlying theories and their empirical practicality in the school context. In relation to the topics covered in the study day, they can be identified the reflections concern how to combine theory and practice to make empirical research in education. During the discussion it was underlined the importance of the fact that theoretical and operational decisions in education are the expression of an evaluation based on reliable empirical data.

The learning processes of the academic year 2019/2020 were characterized by a great change: the general suspension of teaching in presence and the synchronous and asynchronous start of lessons due to the spread of the Sars-Cov-2 virus (Covid-19). This change required teachers of all types and institutional grades to re-design educational activities using information and communication technologies. The International Conference on «Didactics and university didactics: Theories, cultures, practices» at the test of the Covid- 19 Lockdown, had as its objective the comparison between experts who have returned, on the basis of empirical evidences, a picture of the impact that the use of ICT has determined on the learning and socialization of pupils and on the autonomy of the various scholastic and university institutions.

Coronavirus Disease (Covid-19) pandemic influenced education systems throughout the world, including in Indonesia. It makes the universities and schools go online for their teaching-learning process. Therefore, mobile learning can be an alternative solution to carry out the teaching and learning process as suggested by the government. The purpose of this study was to explore empirically mobile learning acceptances based on Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) with satisfaction as the mediating variable. The population of this study is 250 Economics Education students at Universitas Negeri Semarang. The sample was taken by purposive sampling with the criteria of students who have used mobile learning in supporting their learning activities. Structural Equation Model (SEM) with AMOS 24 was performed to analyze quantitative data. The results showed that from 6 hypotheses, there are 5 accepted hypotheses; they are; perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and perceived interactivity have positive and significant effects on the intention to use mobile learning. The mediating variable (satisfaction) is successful to strengthen the influence between perceived ease of use and intention; and perceived usefulness and intention. However, satisfaction is rejected to mediate perceived interactivity and intention to use. Stakeholders should improve students’ satisfaction in their learning activities. The limitation of this study was the research results cannot be easely generalized in other contexts. In the future, other researchers can add other factors to examine better technology acceptance.

In a broadest sense, video-based education has a long history that dates back to the last century. The spread of television and, few years later, of multimedia have profoundly marked the rise of video in education and teaching. In recent years, the digitization and broadband, as well as the increasingly widespread availability of mobile technology, cheap and easy-to-use, have transformed the web into a huge place of production and video sharing. The phenomenon now takes on a new aspect for education and looks set to significantly change the methods of teacher training. In this paper we describe the new prospects of video-based education opened up by recent developments of the web, with particular reference to the Web 2.0 with YouTube and others video-sharing platforms. We will present two training methods enhanced by videos: the video-modeling and video-coaching, and we will analyze their potential problems in relation to teacher training.

In this study the effects of school and classroom climate and teacher’s behavior on Italian students’ mathematical achievement score in PISA 2012 were investigated. Simple and scale indices provided by the PISA database, constructed by responses from the students’ and principals’ background questionnaires, were considered as predictive variables of the math achievement scores. Multilevel models including all the predictive variables, controlling for some relevant student, family background and school variables, confirmed that perceptions of school and classroom climate and teachers’ behavior influence mathematics performance in PISA. In particular, the effect of the teacher’s use of cognitive activation strategies had the strongest positive effect, followed by the school and classroom climate indicators. Thus, more cognitively activating instruction and an orderly and peaceful atmosphere in schools and classrooms encourage students and help to transform existing interests into mathematic achievement. Our analyses show that these factors can also influence the gap between Northern and Southern Italian macro-areas. When the predictive variables are added to the control variables in our multilevel models including macro-area indicators, the gap between Northern macro-areas and the Southern-Islands decreases by over twenty per cent, and the gap between Northern macro-areas and the Southern by over fourteen per cent. On the basis of these results, we have provided some useful indications for Italian educators and policy makers. © 2016, Edizioni Universitarie di Lettere Economia Diritto. All rights reserved.

The concluding conference of the national research project PRIN 2013-2016 entitled «Formative Success, Inclusion and Social Cohesion: Innovative Strategies, ICT and Evaluation Models. Research Results and New Perspectives» was be held in Rome, on the 17th and 18th of March 2017 at the Department of Education, University Roma Tre. The congress has represented the milestone of a three-year interdisciplinary research project, attended by seven italian universities: the University Rome Tre (leader of the project) and the University of Turin, Verona, Bologna, Rome Sapienza, Foggia and Palermo. During the conference, the overall and specific outcomes obtained by each work units were presented. The PRIN project has allowed significant evidences of some of the preconditionsthat can allow teachers and schools to employ coherently and effectively innovative teaching strategies, ICT, and to apply evaluation models, in particula the formative evaluation system. The themes of self-assessment and orientation were also addressed in the perspective of promoting educational success, school and social inclusion. A specific attention was given to the problem related to orientation strategies and university-work transition.

Cultural and Gender Studies represent by now a fundamental instrument in the analysis of audiovisual language, both for the cinematographic and the television one, as shown by the growing academic attention for serial productions. This article intends to carry out a theoretical survey on Gender Studies underlying their use in the audiovisual language. The specific subject of our survey is the TV series «Top of the Lake» (2013) signed, among others, by the New Zealand director Jane Campion. The series has turned out to be particularly interesting in terms of modification of the cultural and gender imaginary related to the woman and to the binomial male/female. The «Top of the Lake» TV series creates and offers the audience a sophisticated critique of the traditional visual codes normally associated to the gender, in order to hinder all passive identification processes to the characters represented on the screen. This case of study proves to be not only an interesting mix between authorship and mainstream language, but it’s also particularly appropriate for a gender analysis, as it shows the ability of audiovisual language to convey a problematic representation of prevailing social models. The work of Jane Campion, in harmony with the feminist theory, takes advantage of the television serial format in order to reflect, in a new revolutionary way, on the links between masculinity and femininity in the contemporary Western culture, showing how audiovisual representation can be a privileged dimension in the construction of meaning and collective consciousness.

The Soft Skills Self-evaluation Questionnaire (3SQ, 41 items) was validated using the responses of 1216 Italian students attending the fourth and the fifth grade of upper secondary school (Lucisano & du Mérac, 2019a), demonstrating good psychometric properties (du Mérac & De Santis, 2020; du Mérac, Livi, & Lucisano, 2020). The adaptation of the 3SQ (40 items) for 8th-grade students was validated in Rome using the responses of 507 students, confirming the factorial structure, sufficient independence, and a good internal consistency (Cronbach alpha between .75 and .92 and 52.23% of the total variance explained). Here, we present the criterion-related validity of the five scales of the adapted 3SQ: Self-confidence, Autonomy, Problem-solving, Cooperation, Empathy. During a PhD research project (Scippo, 2021), these dimensions were also measured in Rome with other instruments, using a sample of 403 8th grade students. The analysis of the data confirms good reliability of the five scales (between .79 and .92), shows good indices of the confirmatory factor analysis of all the scales (RMSEA = .05, SRMR = .08), and reveals significant correlations (between .38 and .68) between the scales of the adapted 3SQ and the other scales measuring the same dimensions. In conclusion, this concurrent validity check reinforces the validity of the adapted 3SQ construct and, consequently, its usefulness for both research and guidance.

The Development of Inferential Reading Skills in Kindergarten by Means of IWB: A Preliminary Research The article describes the communicative and interactive processes in groups of kindergarten children engaged in text reading/understanding tasks through the functional use of IWB. The aim is to use specific methodologies and teaching aids to assess whether and how it is possible to stimulate and facilitate inferential skills development with the learner’s active involvement. In this understanding process, the basic function is carried out by an adult who controls the interaction between peers during the reading step and the way the children are engaged to participate and act. The research project consists of meetings during which children are invited to read animated figures or static picture sequences. The experimental design envisages a control group in which a teacher introduces materials without the aid of IWB, and an experimental group in which children work on the same materials presented through IWB. Moreover, the research aims to show how the use and sharing of soundgraphic texts can enhance the children’s analytical competence and heuristic processes.

Cognitive enhancement refers to any type of improvement in cognitive performance following structured interventions. Research evidence demonstrates the effectiveness of specific programs to improve cognitive abilities, such as logical reasoning, deployment of attentional resources, working memory, and metacognitive strategies such as self-moni-toring, modelling, and peer-tutoring. In recent years, many studies have evaluated the effects of various cognitive enhancement programs to enhance these functions. This paper aims to investigate the value of the Logical Intelligence Enhancement Program (LIEP; Calvani et al., 2017) in providing primary school students with effective strategies for the improvement of high cognitive skills related to issues of a logical nature and problem solving. For the study, two fourth-grade classes of an ordinary Italian primary school were involved in an experimental investigation. The results clearly confirm that the program has potential to empower learners to develop cognitive abilities / logical reasoning. Although needing further substantiation, the findings from this study may be useful for both educational and scientific purposes. © 2018, Edizioni Universitarie di Lettere Economia Diritto. All rights reserved.

Within a research project on «academic excellence in the state school», this paper is a contribution to the sociological reflection on the cultural and organisational characteristics of the school and its relationship with the academic success of students. The data we present stem from a case study underway at a secondary school in the north of Portugal, referring to the universe of students that since 2003 have distinguished themselves for achieving grades equal to or greater than 18 (on a scale of 0 to 20) and have thus been included in the school’s Framework of Excellence. From a contextual approach to this educational practice, we focused on the cultural characteristics of the school/subject as analytical support for the study of school and non-school dimensions in their mutual connections. To this end, we used the information from document analysis and data collected from a questionnaire survey administered to more than two-thirds of the students included in the above-mentioned Framework of Excellence. Subsequently, we will use the data from this survey to understand the extent to which academic excellence is perceived as an indivisible social construction of the school’s political and organisational matrix, particularly in terms of the educational and teaching guidelines adopted by the management body. We will conclude by questioning the meaning of the school’s management policies regarding the emphasis on educational outcomes, with particular focus on the representations of excellent students in the processes of school leadership, teaching organisation, school merit and justice. © 2015, Edizioni Universitarie di Lettere Economia Diritto. All rights reserved.

The aim of this research is to associate academic self-concept with the educational level of the parents and previous experiences of students in higher education. It is a cross-sectional study that evaluated 1093 students from a private university in Chile. The instruments used were the academic self-concept scale (ASCS), the variables of educational level of the parents and students previous experience in higher education. Bivariate correlations were made using the Spearman coefficient, associations using Pearson’s Chi-Square, and mean difference using the Mann-Whitney U between ASCS with the parents’ educational level and previous experience in higher education. The outcomes indicate correlation, association and mean difference (p < .05) between the ASCS and the educational level of the mother when she has university studies, as well as with the existence of previous experiences in higher education, being the father’s educational level of no significant impact. In conclusion, academic self-concept is greater when students have a mother with university studies and when they have previous experiences in higher education.

This article discusses the effectiveness of colloquium for university guidance in facilitating academic success and address the phenomenon of the delay in the studies, which also represents a drop-out risk factor. Before and after the session period of the colloquium for guidance, are administered some questionnaires including the OQ-45 and Lambert Hill (1994; Lo Coco et al., 2008). Participants are divided into an experimental group (80 students completing the guidance session in the first semester), and a control group (52 students placed on the waiting list, who have booked advice for guidance session in the next semester). The characteristics of the participants are described (age, frequented faculty, main areas of discomfort), and data collected show the significant reduction of the symptoms of stress and of the common relational difficulties after the colloquia for university guidance. Data underscore even the efficacy and good stability effects during the follow-up session. Moreover, compared to the control group, students who have done the session path for orientation have showed a significant recovery of the studies. The offer by a university institution of guidance colloquium is one of the many initiatives to facilitate academic success, as well as the setting up of credit recovery courses, the presence of educational support achieved through mentoring and/or online individualized teaching strategies the implementation of paths of re-training orientation.

Many methods for measuring agreement among raters have been proposed and applied in many domains in the areas of education, psychology, sociology, and medical research. A brief overview of the most used measures of interrater absolute agreements for ordinal rating scales is provided, and a new index is proposed that has several advantages. In particular, the new index allows to evaluate the agreement between raters for each single case (subject or object), and to obtain also a global measure of the interrater agreement for the whole group of cases evaluated. The possibility of having evaluations of the agreement on the single case is particularly useful, for example, in situations where the rating scale is being tested, and it is necessary to identify any changes to it, or to request the raters for a specific comparison on the single case in which the disagreement occurred. The index is not affected by the possible concentration of ratings on a very small number of levels of the ordinal scale.

In this study, we present a new questionnaire, the Science Activities Evaluation Engagement (SAEE) instrument, for the evaluation of the students’ engagement in STEM oriented extra-curricular activities. The questionnaire was administered to about 1000 secondary school students who participated in the activities of the Piano Nazionale Lauree Scientifiche in Biology, Chemistry and Physics. Through an exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, it was possible to validate a four-factor structure of the instrument: Satisfaction with the followed activities; Utility of the activities; Difficulties in following the activities; Involvement of close people. The obtained factor structure shows a good model fit, with each of the obtained scales showing an excellent reliability. Criterion validity was established through the academic motivation scale. The proposed instrument shows also an adequate convergent validity and a sufficient discriminant validity. Implications of the study for the evaluation of Third Mission activities of the Italian universities are also briefly discussed.

It is universally agreed that professional development is important but much money has been spent on training and development activities without a commensurate impact on pupils’ learning and wellbeing. With financial constraints hitting education systems across the world, the time is right to try to understand professional development better for as Lawless and Pellegrino (2007) state although the number of opportunities for teachers has increased, our understanding about what constitutes quality professional development, what teachers learn from it, or its impact on student outcomes has not substantially changed. Ascertaining the difference professional development makes is a complex process. Exposure to and participation in development activities may or may not bring about change to individuals’ beliefs, values, attitudes and behaviours. These changes to individuals may or may not lead to changes in the classroom and school practice. And these changes may or may not lead to improvement in pupil outcomes. Difficulties in researching this field, some have argued, stem from simplistic conceptualisations of teacher professional learning that fail to consider how learning is embedded in work contexts. This paper seeks to unpack some methodological issues related to evaluating the difference that professional development makes.

The revised Educational Context Perception Questionnaire (ECPQ II) (du Mérac, 2016and 2017) is used to assess five dimensions of the students’ classroom perception: Mutualappreciation, Discrimination, Didactics, Cohesion and Participation. Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological theory served as a guide for the definition of the research process and the identification of dimensions to explore. The aim of the present study was to analyze the psychometric properties of the ECPQ II intended for first-grade secondary schooling. The 26-item version of the ECPQ II was administered to a sample of 2029 students, enrolled inlower secondary schools (grades 6-8) in Rome. An Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was applied and the factor model structure was tested for model fit using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The five-factor model showed a good fit to the data and had good reliability. The current research confirmed the factor structure of the measure and showed that the ECPQ II, adapted to assess the first-grade secondary schooling, has supportive psychometric properties of validity and reliability.

Resilience and socio-emotional skills play a central role in promoting individual’s general and academic well-being and supporting a positive adaptation to the context. The school can play a strategic role in the evaluation of these aspects. The Questionnaire for the Assessment of Resilient Attitude at school (QVAR), derived from the Devereux Student Strengths Assessment, was developed for the assessment of resilience and socioemotional skills in lower secondary school students. The questionnaire recalls the perspective of strength-based assessment, focusing on the individuals’ resources. The purpose of this contribution is to offer an overview of the theoretical framework on the relevance of resilience and socio-emotional skills and to present the procedure for constructing, adapting and validating the QVAR. The sample of schools that participated in the validation of the QVAR belongs entirely to the three-year period of lower secondary school and is distributed throughout the country. The classes participating in the survey were 88 for a total of 1401 students, consisting of 698 female students and 703 students. The statistical analyzes conducted confirm the good psychometric properties of the Resilient Attitude Assessment Questionnaire (QVAR): this will allow the application to plan and monitor interventions to improve the student’s coping skills.

Teacher Self-Efficacy Scale: Adaptation and Validation in Italy According to Albert Bandura (1977, 1992, 1994, 1995), self-efficacy is «the belief in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations». A person’s attitudes, abilities and cognitive skills comprise what is known as the self-system. This system plays a major role in how we perceive situations and how we behave in response to different situations. Self-efficacy is essential component of this self-system. In other words, self-efficacy is a person’s belief in his or her ability to succeed in a particular situation. In the international literature, self-efficacy is an important topic among psychologists and educators. As Bandura and other researchers have demonstrated, self-efficacy can have an impact on behavior and motivation. To assess teacher self-efficacy, we applied the Teacher Self-Efficacy Scale by Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2001: for the Italian translation and adaptation we interviewed 200 teachers of primary and secondary schools (both genders represented). This scale is consistently found on three factors: «Efficacy for Student Engagement» (8 items), «Efficacy for Instructional Strategies» (8 items), and «Efficacy for Classroom Management» (8 items). The Italian adaptation confirms the relevance of the three factors and the statistical analysis shows the validity of the Italian version of the scale.

The article describes the process of constructing an item bank aimed at implementing a computer-based MultiStage adaptive Test (MST) for the estimation of the mathematical ability of second-grade secondary school students. The multilevel adaptive tests are briefly introduced and the main steps of the bank construction process are described: the definition of the object of the test, the selection of the items downstream of the pretest operations, assuming that the data are adapted to a IRT model with one parameter, and the verification of the uni-dimensionality of the bank as a whole. The article also highlights some of the difficulties that can be encountered, such as being able to obtain adequate coverage of the test’s object or the range of the ability. The process described was overall successful and sufficiently general to be able to adapt to different needs, such as the construction of parallel linear tests or traditional adaptive tests (CAT – Computer-based Adaptive Test), aimed not only at summative or system assessment, but also, if the dimensions of the bank allow it, to formative evaluation. © 2018, Edizioni Universitarie di Lettere Economia Diritto. All rights reserved.

The present study was an attempt to investigate the effect of communication skills training on social empowerment and social adjustment of so-called «slow-paced» adolescents (ie those whoo need psychological, physical and emotional drivers to actualize their potential abilities). The research method was a control-Group Pretest-Posttest Quasi-Experimental design. The population of the study consisted of all slow-paced female students aged 13-15 years in Ghaenat city (South Khorasan Province) during 2019. 24 samples selected from the population through convenient sampling were randomly assigned to two experimental and control groups (12 individuals in each group). Teachers or parents of both subject groups were asked to fill the questionnaires (pre-test). In the next step, the experimental group was presented with ten 45-minute sessions on communication skills, and the control group did not receive any training. In the end, both groups responded to the research instrument (post-test). Vineland social maturity scale was used as the data collection instrument. The collected data were analyzed through covariance analysis using SPSS software version 22. The results showed that communication skills training has a significant impact on social empowerment (F = 15.47, p = 0.001) and social adjustment (F = 49.64, p = 0.001). In other words, it can be argued that the experimental and control groups significantly differ from each other in terms of the communication skills training impacts on social empowerment and its components as well as social maturity. In conclusion, communication skills training significantly improves the social empowerment and social maturity of slow-paced female adolescents in the experimental group.

Identity Demands and Self-Reports in a Group of Adolescent Graffiti Writers. This paper attempts to investigate the world of graffiti art as a widely popular phenomenon among adolescents, especially in urban contexts. We hypothesize that this activity is an answer to the need for identity and for belonging, typical of adolescence. In particular, we analyzed social identity in the crew and in the broader social context. Twenty young people (aged thirteen to twenty-three years), with nineteen males and only one female, underwent a semi-structured interview on social identity. The transcript was then analysed according to the following categories: the writer’s identity (autobiographical, behavioural and emotional aspects along with personal commitment); group identity (the crew, the rules); contextual aspects (belonging, communication goals, relations with the law). The results show two aspects of the activity: on the one hand, graffiti represents an answer to identity needs through its obvious visibility, a revelation and recognition of the self through tagging; on the other hand, it meets the need to belong through the crew’s mutual loyalty, the challenge and sharing milieu.

The purpose of this study is to understand the impact of the school environment compared to the Scouting environment on the leadership attitudes of adolescents. The ways in which the social context affects the development of leadership attitudes is of special importance in view of the guidelines issued by the OECD, UNESCO and European Union, which envision schools as places of social development. In order to examine the ways in which these different contexts affect leadership development, we used two instruments: the «Educational Context Perception Questionnaire» (ECPQ), for the analysis of the adolescents’ perception of their educational context, and the «Socially Responsible Leadership Scale» (SRLS), which measures the Individual, Group, and Social Values of the adolescents, to which we added a dimension of Leadership Capacities. The study was conducted on a judgment sample, consisting of 600 students and 231 Scouts enrolled in upper secondary school in Rome (9th and 10th grades). Path-analyses were conducted to test, for the students and the Scouts, the effects of the ECPQ dimensions on leadership attitudes and capacities and to determine the relationships between the leadership dimensions. Findings revealed different effects among students and Scouts, of the educational context perception on their leadership attitudes and capacities, an effect of the Individual Values on the Group Values and an effect of the Group Values on the Social Values and Leadership Capacities. © 2015, Edizioni Universitarie di Lettere Economia Diritto. All rights reserved.

Studies have shown that the satisfaction of basic psychological needs, as defined by Self- Determination Theory, has a great impact on adolescents’ well-being, prosocial behavior and academic success. In the present study, we aim to validate a brief scale for adolescents measuring the satisfaction of the three basic needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. A preliminary qualitative study was conducted to select and adapt for adolescents a subset of 12 items from the original version of the Basic Psychological Needs Satisfaction Scale (BPNS). This version of the scale was then analyzed in terms of dimensionality, measurement invariance and criterion validity on a sample of 308 Italian adolescents (M age = 14.04 years; 57.1% males). The results of confirmatory factor analyses supported the posited three-factors structure and the measurement invariance of the instrument across gender. Correlations with a measure of psychological well-being provided evidence for criterion validity. The scale proved to be a valid and reliable instrument to measure the levels of satisfaction of the psychological need for autonomy, competence and relatedness in adolescents.

The UCBM’s nurses and doctors have produced patients information material under the form of brochures that we delivered to patients in order to help them better understand their pathology, therapeutic path and procedure to which they will have to undergo. With the Covid-19, doctors necessarily spend less time with patients. This means that patients tend to (mis)inform themselves on internet. We analyzed the PIM’s text readability with the Gulpease index. We submitted a qualitative questionnaire to 100 patients to evaluate the clarity of presentation and the communicative effectiveness and how much these allowed or not them to face their procedure with greater clarity and serenity. Brochures aroused interest in 77% of patients, where 87% declared that «The concepts are clear and I could understand them», 55% indicated that «The information is useful for understanding my condition». None of the them reach 40 pt. of the Gulpease index. Furthermore, the institutional font size was too small. Education of adult patient is a transversal area of pedagogy, medical clinic and communication. Experts from various fields (including patient associations) should collaborate to create informative materials that are useful for both patients and doctors/nurses.

Teaching Spanish in Adult Education Centers in Andalusia Adult education in Andalusia has been particularly important since 1983, when a specific adult education programme («Programa de Educación de Adultos») was initiated with the main objective of achieving zero illiteracy in this region of Spain. In 1994, further legislation was introduced to carry out projects and actions aimed at the immigrant population. Since then, the number of immigrants attending public schools in Andalusia has continuously increased. Employment in schools for adults has risen as in other public educational institutions and now has more than 2,000 teachers who work with over 120,000 students. Teacher training and familiarity with ICT is a key area here. In addition, teaching and learning processes are enhanced with more appropriate methods, which are adjusted to the interests and abilities of learners. The aim of this study is to examine significant learning events based on the experience of immigrant students, who, to a certain extent, construct their knowledge of the new language based on their current needs and on the knowledge previously acquired in their country of origin.

Experiential Knowledge and Sustainable Leadership in Adult Education. Pedagogical Reflections This article tries to reconcile the two factors that in past decades have characterised the educational debate on adult education and on education as a whole: the traditional dimension of on-going education and the emerging concept of lifelong learning. Experiential learning, the validation of experiential acquirements and the dynamics of sustainable leadership by educators appear as the field where this discrepancy can be resolved in an antinomic relationship. In the context of sustainable management, the past professional career of citizens and labour market demands are important variables for our societies characterized by the knowledge economy. In today’s reality, the paradigms often referred to are the paradigm of complexity, which is an interpretative figure of Modernity, and the paradigm of sustainability, which emerged from Post Modernity or Late Modernity. They are, or seem to be, paradoxical terms, but their dynamic relationship leads to an essential need for educators: the sustainable management of complexity. Experiential learning and sustainable leadership undertaken by educators fit into this scenario and are an opportunity for those who have the educational tasks of creating the future, in addition to conserving and selecting the past. Finally, they are a sort of creative recombination of past, present and future projects. Thus, past environments, cultural traditions, indigenous knowledge, social and working experiences and collective memories are preserved and defended because they are valuable in themselves (the ontological dignity of human beings) and are a resource for meaningful learning and improvement of living conditions.

The goal of this study is to investigate the conceptions of learning shared by older adults and to assess the relationships of such conceptions with creativity and satisfaction with life. A sample of 322 older adults (mean age = 72 years) attending Universities of the Third Age were administered the shortened version of a questionnaire aimed at capturing opinions and feelings associated to learning, a task from the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, and the Satisfaction with Life Scale. Age, gender, schooling, occupation, marital status, and hobbies of the participants were taken into account. Factorial analyses showed that different conceptions of learning can be identified and that some of them are affected by age, gender, and the hobbies practised by the respondents. Older participants and women considered learning as an interpersonal and focused process to a larger extent. Older participants expressed negative feelings about learning, whereas women expressed positive feelings. Satisfaction with life changed according to marital status with married people scoring higher. Creative skills decreased with age and were influenced by gender, level of education, marital status, and hobbies practiced. Associations between conceptions of learning and satisfaction with life and creativity emerged. Implications for interventions addressing older adults’ well-being are discussed. © 2018, Edizioni Universitarie di Lettere Economia Diritto. All rights reserved.

Several tools have been employed to detect the emergence and development of racial stereotypes and prejudices among little children and adolescents. In our study, we confront some of these tools, and present the results of the Skin Colours Test. In its specificity, the Skin Colours Test proposes a change in the object of investigation (appreciation of the homogeneity or heterogeneity of colours) and aims to detect explicit and implicit stereotypes and prejudices of boys and girls regarding aesthetic choices (even neutral choices) concerning skin colours. Sample: one group of 129 (64 F) students (M = 12.31), almost all of Italian descent, and another group of 129 (62 F) students (M = 12.36), less than 30% of different descents. Method: three pictures, each made up of 16 skin colours, were shown and students were asked to vote on their aesthetic preference between homogeneity or heterogeneity of skin colours and to give reasons for these choices. Main results: the motivations for some choices that preferred skin colour heterogeneity (neutral choice) over homogeneity, brought out stereotypes and biases. In addition, we consider the contextual specificities that the Skin Colours Test detects as crucial in order to detect specific educational needs and structure targeted educational interventions.

In terms of organizational structure, educational systems are closely related to the administrative systems of their respective countries. Looking at Southern European countries (and namely Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece and, to a lesser degree, France) from a comparativist stance, one can see a number of common elements characterizing their administrative systems. Their main common feature is the lack of decentralization in educational decision- making, a fact that makes them rank very low in OECD assessments. This paper attempts to identify the reasons and factors that led Southern European countries to this position by examining their laws and their administrative and educational system peculiarities. The type of legal system and type of state in Southern Europe offer an alternative analysis platform when researching the similarities and differences of educational systems. This comparativist view opens up a broad research field: it can support networking and help exchange ideas on policy and practices with a view to improving education and the future of our children. © 2015, Edizioni Universitarie di Lettere Economia Diritto. All rights reserved.

Foster care is a condition of welcoming children with families in serious difficulty, legally regulated, aimed at guaranteeing to minors a suitable space for growth, and to families of origin the possibility of overcoming the problems so as to consent the return of the children. It is a challenging educational condition, to be deepened with research. The complexity of the backgrounds of origin and the co-presence of multiple risk factors in fact generate in children and young people in foster care, important difficulties in development, which foster families have to cope with, also with the support of specialists, services and associations. However, the skills that caregivers come to build over the years are valuable, deserving of pedagogical insights, so that good practices of positive parenting can be valued and shared. In this paper we will report the results of a survey, carried out with a national sample of 323 foster families. The study makes it possible to investigate the reasons for the custody prevision, the relationships with families of origin, the difficult life trajectories of the children in foster care (transitions, placements, discontinuities, years of foster care, continuation of relationships after foster care). In this way it is possible to identify the needs highlighted by the minors, the relevant problems that emerge and the promising strategies adopted by the foster families.

Dropout rates in Italy are very high, particularly in freshmen students (Anvur, 2016). University students’ academic achievement has been found to prevent dropout. The present study tested a predicting model of academic achievement in first-year university students based on self-determination theory, through a longitudinal design with two points in time. Freshmen students in a bachelor program of an Italian university (N = 313; M age = 21.34 years; SD = 4.74; 72.2% female) completed measures of perceived autonomy support from parents and teachers, autonomous motivation, perceived academic control, and intention to drop out from university at the start of their academic year. At the end of the first-semester, information about students’ academic achievement have been collected from the department office. Results from structural equation modeling analyses supported the hypothesized model. Specifically, perceived autonomy support from parents and teachers predicted perceived academic control via autonomous motives; perceived academic control predicted intention to dropout, which, in turn, predicts academic achievement. A major contribution was demonstrating the important role of perceived autonomy support and perceived academic control in freshman students’ academic achievement. These findings could provide a contribution in implementing adequate intervention supporting freshman students in order to promote academic achievement and, consequently, to prevent dropout from university. © 2018, Edizioni Universitarie di Lettere Economia Diritto. All rights reserved.

The Weight of Quantitative Studies in the Exercising of Leadership in the School Field The article presents the importance of leadership in educational policies and shows the weight of the spreading of outcomes of both national and international comparative assessments on leadership geared to promoting improvement processes. The contribution examines certain critical aspects of the Italian context that seem to limit the exercising of leadership in the school field: the use of survey results that make policymakers less accountable; the delusionary and reassuring use made of survey results for schools, teachers and school heads; the application of many external evaluation methods in the face of an evident disengagement with regard to the improvement of didactic organization and the qualification of learning processes. The article also indicates the spheres in which survey results are strategic in order to improve teaching and to qualify learning processes. Finally, the importance that leadership can have in the school field for promoting a culture of data and evaluation is affirmed.

The study proposes some reflections about the professional profile of the socio-pedagogical educator in the framework of inclusive education. In Italy, also in the perspective of the long life learning, the 205/2017 law attributes a fundamental role to the educator in connection with the dialogue, the collaboration and the interaction between the professional community and the school service. As observed by some ICF-CY based research (the ICF-CY application has recently been underlined also in the formative field), the educator is a link between school, children, students and families. He gives a very important contribute to realize the «Plan of education for sustainability» and the governance of special educational needs, enhancing formal, informal and non-formal learning. The educator can contribute to constructing innovative practices and reflective transformation by deepening and research: this is an identifying element of inclusive governance. In this context, the educator is an engine of effective relationship and mediation between school and territory and he establishes himself as a professional able to act in the dialectic and constructive relationship with all the subjects who work in educational services.

This paper returns the outcomes of a research-training project, as result of the collaboration between university researchers and teachers and principals of a network of schools in Lazio. Research-training is a way of doing empirical research that, making use of differentiated methodologies aims to develop teaching professionalism through the construction of research paths agreed between universities and schools. The present investigation started from a training need made explicit by schools: the need to develop skills useful for dealing with the transition from grades to judgments. A synthesis of teachers’ diverse views on assessment and perceptions of change is proposed here. The reflection and evidence gathered can help to prefigure the direction to be taken to overcome the risk that the use of feedback or levels may trace a construct that refers to the grade, de-emphasizing or effectively nullifying its value. Feedback and restitution, on the other hand, are tools of a motivating design that aims to provide learners with guidance for understanding and analysing their own learning and support for making effective and conscious choices in organising future learning.

From Phenomenogical Analysis to Experimental Verification in Psychology: Studies on Psychic Defence Mechanisms in the Educational Field The present contribution examines the shift from introspective analysis, based on the phenomenological method, to the evaluation of introspective data collected by means of empirical methods, which go to define so-called «experimental Phenomenology», all within a perspective of the integration between experimental phenomenology and psychodynamic assumptions. This examination is conducted here with regard to psychological defence mechanisms and delineates the opposing processes of «perceptual defence» and «emphasizing» (facilitation, accentuation). After describing the main results achieved in the perceptological domain, where it is possible to adopt an orthodox experimental protocol, the attention shifts to field studies in the educational field regarding the teacher-student relation, according to an empirical methodology enabling a «quantification» of the presence of specific defence mechanisms which can arise in the educational relation, such as the overestimation or underestimation of phenomenal qualities attributed to oneself and/or to the other. Besides confirming the main dynamics of accentuation (overestimation) and defence (underestimation) demonstrated experimentally in laboratory studies, the contribution provides an example of the quantification of an essentially qualitative concept as the «defence mechanism», as is clear from its very definition: a defence mechanism is any behavioral strategy or attitude aimed at reducing and/or preventing subjectively perceived pain and suffering. This is a good opportunity, from a methodological standpoint, to demonstrate how it is possible to quantify strongly subjective variables in order to obtain an empirical verification, which is essential for arriving at scientifically credited knowledge.

In health promotion area, the integration of the school and health sectors is essential. The objective of this work is to introduce a logical framework to «align» educational concepts and objectives, starting from international and national indications on school curricula, with health promotion concepts and objectives (in particular life skill and life skill education). A working group composed of 26 school representatives and health promotion professionals has been set up and in a participatory way they have produced alignment tables for different school orders. The tables propose an alignment between: European key competences for lifelong learning, student profile competences, targets for competence development, life skills and LifeSkills Training objectives. The logical framework offers a comparison between different conceptualisations of competences useful for learning and people’s well-being. It can also serve as a guideline for school planning competence-based oriented towards health promotion and it can represent an operationalisation of cross-sectoral collaboration.

The paper describes the review procedure for a reading comprehension test designed for high school students. The objective is to analyze the functioning of a measuring instrument, used in the context of an investigation on reading in the high schools of three Italian regions – Basilicata, Calabria and Campania – in order to improve and perfect this instrument in view of the subsequent research phases. The reflections that follow are intended to provide a guide for the interpretation of the response frequencies, the indices of discrimination and difficulty, useful for establishing which questions need further revision. By analyzing internal consistency, construct validity, understood as item discriminativity, difficulty, biserial point values and distribution of answers on the four options provided by the multiple answer, we intend to demonstrate how, by administering the same test several times, we they can obtain new indications that allow them to file and refine the problematic questions, reflecting on the critical issues that have emerged (Agrusti, 2008).

A Smart Educational Action as the Italian Pat to the Smart City: The Multimedia Public Library and Digital Culture Although the term «smart city» is increasingly used today, it is open to different interpretations and uses. Much like an increasing fashion that is easy to adopt, the smart city is being increasingly proclaimed, proposed and considered a goal by policymakers. Many administrative actions and applications are called «smart», but what is a «smart city» exactly? When can a city actually be considered smart? What is the relationship between the «smartness» of its technological-organizational systems of social life, of its environment or territory and of its citizens’ intelligence? Considering the development and evolution of the modern city, is there a relationship between intelligence and creativity? Through the answers to these questions, the result of a logical-consequential theoretical analysis, and with regard to the critical acquisition and spreading of a digital culture, this contribution aims to put forward and support the value linked to creating a widespread network of multimedia public libraries, proposed as a cornerstone for actually achieving a smart city. This action must not be delayed in Italy seeing as it significantly lags behind other European and more economically advanced countries in this regard. Italy is sorely lacking in this kind of library with its far-reaching cultural benefits that can potentially enhance human socio-creative development of «digital intelligence».

Learning planning, often considered by teacher as a bureaucratic practice, becomes a declination of goals, objectives, methods listed in «Indicazioni nazionali». The prescriptive guidance main programme and the choices made by the anthology authors of textbooks seem to leave little space to realize a planning that, with respect to subject content, can respond to the needs of students as individuals. In «Indicazioni nazionali» for high schools of 2010, it should be noted that at the end of the course of study the student must understand the intrinsic value of reading as a response to a self interest and that the study of literature must be through direct contact with lyrics. How can we combine students interests and disciplinary knowledge? How can we avoid the risk that the choices are fruit tastes teacher’s anthology set or authors of textbooks, rather than selections made to convey better the message to those particular students? Starting from these considerations the action-research in progress in two fifth classes of the high school «Alfonso Gatto» in Agropoli, moves. Using the approach of Student Voice, individual students were actively involved in the Italian learning planning. Choosing and motivating some keywords that have become the fil rouge that drove the track selection and authors anthology to be explored. This paper focuses on it.

In this contribution we propose an analysis of the teaching training initiatives for university professors according to the international literature and we present a summary of the effects highlighted by the researches. These highlight the characteristics of effective training for quality teaching. We therefore describe the training model experimented by the University of Turin (IRIDI). The proposal is configured as a pedagogical-transversal and medium-long term program, aimed at professors heterogeneous by discipline, academic experience and roles, who freely adhere to the project. The program takes place around topic related to teaching and assessment, and proposes the transition from teachercentered to student-centered concept, aimed at encouraging also a significant learning through fair strategies of formative and regulatory teaching assessment. We illustrate some results of the impact of the IRIDI course on a sample of 100 university professors. We note in particular the effectiveness of the program in the transformation of teaching and assessment representations and strategies.

The article discusses several models for contrasting educational poverty, demonstrating the need for actions aimed at increasing the resilience of disadvantaged children and adolescents. Different types of factors promoting resilience, on which a direct intervention of teachers and educators is possible, are identified. Subsequently, tools for evaluating these resilience factors at the individual as well as at the group-level are presented, describing their theoretical approach, their scope and their psychometric properties. For each presented indicator, the available information about gender differences and immigrant background differences is reported.

The study describes framework, method and first results of an exploratory research conducted to examine how the italian school of full inclusion realizes education for all student, with specific attention to special educational needs. In detail, the research aims to describe the procedures used in primary and lower secondary school to facilitate the acquisition of a personal and flexible study method for students with learning difficulties and their classmates. In letterature, in fact, the study method is considered as the first balance measure for students with learning difficulties; consequently study method improvement is a very important school task. In addition, the school could ensure that the parents are able to support the development of children study method. According to this perspective, the study considers the environmental factors (WHO, 2007) of each school to highlight the interaction between the student individual condition and the context. The research examines four analisys dimensions related to the study method: cognitive and learning strategies, study planning and organization (use of materials, individuation of balance measures, timing, etc.), emotional management in study situations (learning motivation, students’ acceptance of balance tools, teachers attitude, etc.) and inclusive pratices in school.

The article presents the results of an empirical longitudinal study focusing on the cognitive and motivational factors that influence the risk of drop-out. Thanks to a previous empirical contribution (Biasi, De Vincenzo, & Patrizi, 2017) conducted through an online questionnaire with 2328 students of Roma Tre University, we identified as predictors of drop-out some inadequate cognitive strategies, lack of motivation (or «amotivation») and low levels of school self-efficacy. In order to identify the consistency over time of the relationship between these cognitive and motivational factors, we carried out a year-long longitudinal study aimed at investigating the academic experience of a self-selected sample of 68 students who completed three successive tests. The data showed that the greater the risk of drop-out, the lower the scores obtained by students, over a year, in cognitive strategies of «practice» and «monitoring» of knowledge. Students with a high risk of drop-out also showed a poor connection of new knowledge to the knowledge they already possessed. Moreover, it was confirmed that higher drop-out risk scores correlate with a high level of «amotivation» and «external» motivation scores, and with a low level of «Intrinsic» motivation: persistence over time was also highlighted. Some average «Profiles of cognitive functioning and motivational structure» were devised, useful for individualized guidance or orientation interventions geared to identifying which cognitive strategies can be reinforced in order to favor learning and – during re-orientation – to take into account the level of coherence of student motivation with the chosen study track.

This paper moves from an educational evaluation research conducted in the on the Nursery Degree Programme of Bologna University. Starting from the analysis of transversal competences that are crucial for nurses and from the outcomes of a qualitative exploratory phase of the research, this contribution is focused on the assessment of students’ learning strategies, at the beginning and at the end of the degree programme. Such assessment has been conducted through the application of «Learning Strategies Questionnaire QSA», validated from Pellerey in 1996 to 168 students at the first and last year (160 students) of the Nursery Degree Programme. In the meanwhile the questionnaire has been proposed to almost 100 first year University students from other degree programmes and 390 Secondary School’s students. Thanks to this second and third sample, results could be compared with the standard group through which the questionnaire was validated in 1996 and with other students attending University and Secondary School nowadays. The results put into evidence a certain urgency in reflecting on learning strategies proficiency for students in the last 20 years: in fact the scores of University students now do not appear so far from the results of the students aged 15 in 1996.

Teaching and Gender Differences in 8-12 Year Old Students We present the first results of an extensive study concerning gender differences that are found in school learning. We illustrate them also in order to promote more adequate teaching methods. We analyse nine points of differences between boys and girls in learning and in school behaviour, that should be taken into account in the first cycle of education and that are derived from international studies carried out in Western countries: movement and physical activity within the regular classroom curriculum, cognitive skills, emotions and feelings, relationship with the authority, relationships with peers, metacognitive skills, commitment and perseverance in working, reaction to failure, self-esteem. To assess the results of these studies and to guide teachers firstly in designing and then in reporting their teaching practices that take gender differences into account, we analyse the spontaneous teaching actions of 44 teachers – with students aged between eight and twelve years – who claimed to be attentive to the enhancement of specific feminine and masculine traits in their teaching activities. We identified a total of 24 indicators of gender differences that teachers should consider, partially changing their teaching activities, if they want to give equal opportunities for school achievement to both boys and girls.

This paper refers to the «Interdisciplinary Research Project» of the Department of Education at Roma Tre University. The title of the project is «E-learning for higher education: setting up an integrated model for the qualification of learning and educational relationships in online courses» and represents a development of a previous research (Bocci, 2019a), which was aimed at outlining some dimensions and issues of inclusive online education. Taking as a background the different theoretical perspectives that study inclusion and inclusive processes (such as the Bio-Psycho-Social Model, the Social Model, the Capability Approach and the Universal Design) in the present paper the authors show the results of an exploratory survey aimed at verifying the validity of a new search tool − an analysis form developed starting from the work of Gráinne Conole (2013) on MOOCs − used to analyze the level of inclusion of some university online courses of the EduOpen platform. The aim of the work is to provide a self-analysis tool to better guide in an inclusive perspective those who design and deliver e-learning courses. The first results are encouraging and lead to further investment of resources in this direction.

This exploratory survey concerns the innovation of e-learning systems through the individualization of forms of tutoring, the development of specific professional skills – essential in tertiary education –, and the increase in affective usability with which intends to create a good virtual immersion experience with easy accessibility and positive emotional and attentional involvement. In order to investigate the needs and expectations for a better qualification of virtual learning environments and online didactic, we administered the «Questionnaire on the evaluation of the quality of the educational experience» to the students of the Degree in an online degree program of Roma Tre University. We distinguish assessments provided by young adult students aged 18 to 32 years, mature adults aged 33 to 45 years, and senior adults aged 46 to 58 years. The results indicate the importance attributed in particular by the younger age groups (from 18 to 45 years) to the role of tutor as mediator. The expected professional skills include the request to develop the «individualization capacity of the teaching» and the «organizational and communicative-relational skills». There are also specific expectations of enhancing the «affective usability» of virtual learning environments. Thanks to these forms of innovation of e-learning systems, it will be possible to promote online attention and learning processes.

Digital Environments for the Development of Transversal Competences in University Education International studies show that university teaching is making increasing use of digital environments to integrate traditional teaching. In this paper we consider the contribution that can be made by online environments to develop students’ positive and proactive attitudes with respect to the academic curriculum in order to reduce student drop-out, encourage greater regularity in their academic career, develop transversal competences and promote student guidance. In particular, we have observed the online activities in academic year 2013/2014 carried on by students of General Didactics, a degree course in the Department of Educational Sciences of «Roma Tre» University. These activities include the realization of two online practical classes: completion of the QSA (Questionnaire for Learning Strategies); participation in a cooperative online learning exercise. In both experiences we analyzed the procedures and outcomes. We observed that, through the QSA, students reflected on their learning strategies and on the importance of planning their university commitments: a positive factor is the high percentage of students who took the exam successfully in the first session (approximately 68%). In addition, the questionnaire data clearly show that students found that group work helps to develop cognitive and meta-cognitive competences as well as relationship competences. In particular, we found that in the General Didactics examination the students who had experienced cooperative learning obtained higher grades, on average, than those who did not, and that the former group had less «sigma» compared to the latter.