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La formazione e lo sviluppo della professionalità degli insegnanti e delle loro competenze è un problema di fondamentale importanza per il miglioramento dei sistemi di istruzione e per la costruzione di una scuola democratica caratterizzata al contempo da qualità ed equità. L’articolo presenta il contributo del Centro di Ricerca Educativa sulla Professionalità dell’Insegnante (CRESPI) alla ricerca sulla professionalità docente e sulla formazione degli insegnanti nella prospettiva della Ricerca-Formazione, intesa come metodologia del fare ricerca nelle scuole e con gli insegnanti, orientata alla formazione/trasformazione dell’agire educativo e didattico e alla promozione della riflessività dell’insegnante. The education and training of teachers and the development of their professional competences are crucial for improving educational systems and for increasing their quality and equity. This paper presents the contribution of CRESPI to the research on the education and training of teachers and their professional competences. CRESPI’s approach is that of Ricerca-Formazione (Teacher Professional Development Research), a methodology which entails that educational research is carried out within the schools and with teachers, in order to develop/transform teaching and education and enhance teachers’ reflexivity.

IEA surveys traditionally include a teacher questionnaire among the contextual questionnaires aiming at collecting data on school factors that could be associated with students’ cognitive outcomes. This chapter discusses how data collected from teachers has played a role in IEA studies on civic and citizenship education from the Six Subjects Survey to the Civic Education Study (CIVED) 1999 and the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 2009 and 2016. Elements of continuity and discontinuity are identified over time in relation to the content and the structure of the teacher questionnaires adopted in each survey, looking at the conceptions of civic and citizenship education that informed the instruments’ development and at the changes that occurred over time in the delivering of civic and citizenship education at school. The use of data collected through the teacher questionnaire in IEA international reports as well as in secondary analyses is presented. A substantial increase in informative secondary analyses using teacher data has been registered in the last years, confirming the importance of the teacher questionnaire despite the difficulties in finding direct strong associations between teacher data and students’ outcomes. Civic and citizenship education is one of the school education areas most characterized by gaps between principles and official regulations, between intended and implemented curricula, and between theory (or ideals) and practices. The information gathered through the teacher questionnaire is of great relevance for a better understanding of the characteristics of the schools as learning environments and provides policymakers and researchers with data from the perspective of teachers on the democratic experience students actually have at school.

Background School violence and bullying are a pandemic issue. The academic literature underlined the need to investigate social-contextual risk factors. The United Nations called for more comprehensive and disaggregated data to inform prevention strategies. Objective The present study comprises a set of secondary analyses on Italian data from the International Civic and Citizenship Study 2016. We adopted an innovative ‘bottom-up’ approach to identify the level of disaggregation for national data. The researchers focused on community, social, and economic risk indicators at school-level, and investigated whether it was possible to aggregate schools in different classes, depending on their risk profile. Participants and settings Analyses were implemented on a nationally representative sample of 170 Principals of lower secondary schools, 2,527 teachers and 3,766 students at grade 8. Methods and analyses A Latent Class Analyses was conducted on risk indicators and four classes of risk were identified: No Risk, Community Risk, Socio-economic Risk, Multi-Risk (entropy = .786). No significant differences were found across classes in relation to urban/rural location, school size, and geographical macro-partition. On the contrary, significant differences emerged when considering teachers’ perception of bullying, social problem, and students’ behavior at school. Furthermore significant differences were found for the quality of relationship with teachers as reported by students. Conclusions Results a) suggested a potential gradient of increasing risk moving across the classes; b) provided a contribution to address the gap in the investigation of contextual factors and bullying; c) offered a new lens to tailor interventions to prevent school violence and bullying.

This chapter aims at illustrating and discussing relevant and recent initiatives implemented at European level in the field of civic and citizenship education, the findings of research carried out in this area by international and European organizations, and some possible developments to enhance and to strengthen civic and citizenship education at a school level. The focus is on school and on formal education. In the first part of the chapter, the main programs and initiatives promoted by the Council of Europe and by the European Union are illustrated. In the last part of the chapter, therefore, the initiatives related to the so called “competences for citizenship” and the implications of a competence-oriented approach in the field of CCE are examined.

IEA international comparative studies traditionally include the use of background questionnaires. Data collected through those questionnaires are central to both international reports and secondary analyses, as they allow to better contextualize student results in the cognitive tests and help identify the school and classroom factors that have a direct or indi-rect impact on student performance. A systematic review of the litera-ture on PIRLS, TIMSS, and ICCS was conducted upstream, to identify those school, teacher, and classroom factors which are potentially useful predictors of student performance. Such a review highlighted that it is exceedingly difficult to draw causal inferences, as well as to find strong associations between process-related school variables and student achievement. The type of constructs and variables used in the questionnaire development, the way these constructs and variables are operationally defined, the self-reported nature of the collected data, and the kind of data analyses carried out all contribute to explain that difficulty. In order to verify whether the impact of specific school and teacher characteristics varies as a function of the socioeconomic status of students at the school level, a hierarchical multilevel analysis of TIMSS 2011 data was conducted. Data from the European countries particvipating in the survey were included in the analyses.The analysis measured what proportion of the variance was actually explained by the factors included in the model and whether the impact of the same fac-tors varies in relation to the school socioeconomic background. A sepa-rate analysis was conducted for each considered country and the same multi-level regression model was used first on the schools as a whole, and then treating schools with high and low socioeconomic back-grounds (based on average student SES at school level) as two distinct groups. In most countries, results showed the influence of socioeco-nomic status at school level for all three groups of schools—all schools, high SES schools, and low SES schools. Furthermore, results showed that school and teacher characteristics have different impacts across countries and in relation to school socioeconomic backgrounds.

Within its overarching purpose of investigating the ways in which young people are prepared to undertake their roles as citizens in a range of countries and through its questionnaire for students in participating European countries, the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study 2016 (ICCS 2016) addressed issues related to the specific European context and to the problems currently facing Europe. Decreased solidarity together with the increase in populist, nationalist, anti-establishment political parties in several European countries are the factors complicating dynamics linked not only to the original project of European integration but also to the economic and political relationships between countries (Archick, 2017). Furthermore, in recent years, public debate in Europe has been characterized by broad questions relating to citizens’ sense of belonging to Europe, the need for stronger cooperation among European countries, and concerns about immigration and the effects of the financial crisis.

The ICCS 2016 assessment framework (Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon, Losito, & Agrusti, 2016) identified several contexts that have the potential to influence not only students’ learning outcomes in the field of civic and citizenship education but also their civic engagement. These contexts include the wider community, the school and classroom, the home and peer environment, and characteristics of individual students.

This chapter provides findings on students’ attitudes toward European citizens having the freedom of movement that allows them to work and live throughout Europe. The chapter also considers findings on students’ attitudes toward equal rights for immigrants (e.g., voting, education). These constructs reflect the content domain related to students’ attitudes toward civic principles that is included in the affective-behavioral dimension of the ICCS 2016 assessment framework (Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon, Losito, & Agrusti, 2016).

This chapter examines constructs related to students’ attitudes toward civic society and systems (i.e., students’ attitudes toward European cooperation and the European Union, and students’ perceptions of Europe in the future). It also examines a construct related to students’ attitudes toward civic identities (i.e., students’ perceptions of their own individual future) (Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon, Losito, & Agrusti, 2016).

This chapter addresses Research Question 3 of the ICCS 2016 assessment framework (Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon, Losito, & Agrusti, 2016): What is the extent of students’ engagement in different spheres of society and which factors within or across countries are related to it?

Civic and citizenship education aims to provide young people with the knowledge, understanding, and dispositions that enable them to participate as citizens in society. It seeks to support emerging citizens by helping them understand and engage with society’s principles and institutions, develop and exercise informed critical judgment, and learn about and appreciate citizens’ rights and responsibilities.

Rapporto tecnico della indagine comparativa internazionale ICCS 2016, promossa dall'IEA.

The ICCS 2016 assessment framework (Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon, Losito, & Agrusti, 2016) states that any study of civic-related learning outcomes and civic engagement must consider the contexts in which civic and citizenship education occur.

Il saggio illustra il contributo di Aldo Visalberghi allo sviluppo delle indagini comparative internazionali e alla discussione sull'uso dei loro risultati per orientare le politiche scolastiche nazionali.

ICCS regards civic knowledge as fundamental to effective civic participation. Within the context of ICCS, civic knowledge refers not only to familiarity with the civic and citizenship content described in the ICCS 2016 assessment framework but also to the ability to apply relevant cognitive processes to this content (Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon, Losito, & Agrusti, 2016). Civic knowledge is important in all four of the framework’s content domains.

Il saggio analizza alcune delle condizioni che possono favorire o ostacolare lo sviluppo di progetti di ricerca-formazione all'interno delle scuole.

This chapter explores data relating to ICCS 2016 Research Question 4: What beliefs do students in participating countries hold regarding important civic issues in modern society and what are the factors associated with their variation?

Il volume presenta i risultati del modulo europeo dell'indagine comparativa internazionale sull'educazione civica e alla cittadinanza (ICCS 2016), promossa dall'International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA).

This chapter presents some results of the multivariate analyses of ICCS 2016 data that we conducted in an effort to explain variation in three commonly investigated outcomes of civic and citizenship education: civic knowledge, expected electoral participation, and expected active political participation.

This chapter examines students’ sense of their European identity, a construct that reflects the degree to which students identify with the European region and that is related to the affectivebehavioral domain attitudes in the ICCS 2016 assessment framework (Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon, Losito, & Agrusti, 2016). The chapter also presents findings on students’ opportunities to learn about Europe at school.

La educación cívica de los ciudadanos desempeña un rol igual de importante que la enseñanza de disciplinas como ciencias, matemáticas o literatura. A través de este Informe Internacional sobre Educación Cívica y Ciudadana (ICCS), la IEA no solo demuestra la importancia que otorga a la provisión de este tipo de formación sino también su compromiso e interés por investigar los puntos holísticos de la educación como disciplina. ESP

The article illustrates and discusses aims, organization and activities of the Italian National Institute for the Evaluation of the Education System (Invalsi). In the first part of the article, the relations between the activities carried out by the Institute and the policies adopted in the field of evaluation at a national level are analyzed. The second part focuses on the national assessments carried out by the institute every year. Particularly, an analysis of the tests used in the assessment of reading comprehension and of the conceptual frameworks that oriented their drafting is developed, focusing mainly on the validity issue. Problems related to content validity were identified, as well as several ambiguities related to the aims of the assessments and the use of their results.

The article focuses on the evaluation initiatives and projects carried out in Italy in the recent years. It considers different projects aiming at evaluating the school system, the individual schools, and the universities. The purpose is to make explicit the conceptual and methodological assumptions behind them and to illustrate their impact on school and university teachers’ perceptions of assessment and evaluation. Particular attention is paid to the assessments carried out by the Italian National Institute for the Evaluation of the Education System. The article also discusses the relationships between evaluation and educational policies.