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The management of chronicity at school is characterized by uneven practices. Despite the unanimous consensus on the importance of encouraging the chronically ill child to participate in school activities the adopted strategies appear more oriented towards a logic of simple placement than of real inclusion. The adoption of the healthcare paradigm in the approach to the topic leads to mainly focusing on the necessary ways to compensate for the deficit, offering technical skills and knowledges that the children themselves, with the support of parents and teachers, will have to adapt in their school context. This approach leaves in the shade the existential dimension of the disease, which is connected to the necessity to learn how to manage the need and reconcile it with the requires of the school experience. From this point of view, the international literature on this topic highlights how the management of chronicity at school involves difficulties relating not only to the treatment of the disease and to the ways parents and teachers are involved in the cure, but also to the care of the psycho-socio-educational aspects of the sick child which are crucial for the learning processes. The spaces and times of cure are intertwined with the learning ones in a fragile balance, never definitively acquired, due to the contingent interaction between numerous social and material actors. The suspension of activities to carry out the necessary self-care practices, the sense of diversity when compared to peers, the difficult access to some experiences, the tension perceived among adults for managing time at school, can constitute obstacles in the learning process which, in some cases, can contribute to situations of educational poverty. The adoption of a socio-material approach makes possible the tracing of the multiple interactions between the different social and material actors contributing to the production of school experiences, and the analysis of the existing dynamics of soc

The paper proposes to address a teaching innovation experience based on the use of a shared virtual learning platform. This tool links subjects from different teaching centres that deals with urban heritage issues as well as debates focused on the impact of tourism in historic areas. This experience is framed within the Campus of International Excellence Andalucía Tech, linking the Bachelor’s Degree in Architecture from the Universities of Seville and Malaga. As collaborative virtual environments, EDIEDPAT is a digital bookshelf where students’ exercises are systematically collected. It serves as a platform for online discussion in real-time between students and teachers. Also, students can consult additional learning resources and share personal reflections and findings with the rest of the participants. In opposition to traditional teaching forms, in which the focus falls solely on the teacher, the model tested has placed the student at the centre of learning. Work has been carried out on the collaborative construction of the learning content through shared reasoning processes in which students can develop autonomous reasoning skills by fostering active learning. In the context of undergraduate architecture studies, the goal of this interactive teaching tool is to provide a significant heritage interchange place, through different examples, close and recognisable by all of them. Students work collaboratively, transforming the finalist product of the traditional master class in a process of individual research and shared work and knowledge. Thus, the platform would allow professors to develop reasoning capacity and critical reflection among the students. This methodology is seen as an opportunity to wide students’ perspective concerning the different ways of tackling a heritage object. The comparative analysis will allow them to assume additional concepts by not circumscribing them exclusively to their sphere of action. Finally, this paper will contextualise this i

This article describes steps being taken at Milano-Bicocca University to set up a distributed university museum accessible to teachers, students, and the wider community. Traditional university museums are places and collections that over the centuries have enriched the educational offering of their institutions and served as a resource for research and scientific inquiry. In recent decades, the emphasis has been on sharing and increasing participation in these cultural heritage sites by opening them up to the community, thereby extending the university’s educational outreach. In the project at Milano- Bicocca, a young and interdisciplinary university that has just celebrated the 20th anniversary of its founding, the first step in the process has been to inventorize the objects currently held by each department, with a view to assessing the existing range of potential exhibits and deciding how best to exploit them. Initially these cultural objects will be on display in a digital environment, designed to make them known to larger audiences and stimulate new research ideas. In preparation for this step, the university and its fledgling distributed museum took part in the online event Milano MuseoCity, held from March 2 to March 7, 2021, with a focus on the theme of secret museums. For its debut at this event, the University of Milano-Bicocca presented three main cultural objects, thus keeping the university “top of mind” – despite the ongoing public health emergency – as a place of education and research, but also as a space of encounter and dynamic cultural growth.

This article describes a research project entitled Mobartech, a technological platform for studying and promoting historical and artistic heritage assets, co-funded by the Lombardy Region and the FSeR with the aim of stimulating industrial research, experimental development, and innovation in processes and organizations. The project comprised three case studies: an individual painting, Il Quarto Stato by Pelizza da Volpedo held at Milan’s Museo del Novecento; frescoes from the Giotto school in the Palazzo dell'Arcivescovado in Milan; and the cities of Mantua and Sabbioneta, which together form a single UNESCO world heritage site. We focus here on the third of these case studies, whose twin goals were to conduct scientific research on and promote the cultural heritage sites of Mantua and Sabbioneta by inviting the direct participation of members of the public. The first step in the case study was listening to the voices of the cities’ users, by conducting strategic interviews on site, and developing and administering two questionnaire formats (traditional and digital) with a view to exploring tourists’ and locals’ relationship with the two cities and their suggestions for improving them. This article specifically examines the interview data, which told the story of the respondents’ ties with Mantua and Sabbioneta, brought to light little-known aspects of the city, and informed the construction and sharing of collective knowledge at later stages of the project. The ultimate aim was to develop a toolkit for enhancing visitors’ and locals’ experience of the site. The kit included both physical and digital resources. The entire project was conducted within the framework of informal and inclusive education.

Paper presents a qualitative exploratory research about the topic of educational poverty, reframing this issue according to formal and informal settings of learning. In view of this, it intends to broaden the definition of this phenomenon, investigating professionals’ representations of it.

The constant increase in chronicity, which has become a distinctive feature of countries with advanced economic development, presents a crucial educational challenge: educating patients in the self-management of a disease that will impact on their entire existence. It has, in fact, been observed that therapeutic adherence significantly decreases along the duration of the disease over time. This bears relevant consequences on the health conditions of the subject and on the context, in both economic and social terms. Such phenomenon is amplified by a vision of healthcare solely centered on the medical response to a specific biological need. This prevents from understanding the complexity of the selfmanagement practice and from considering the psycho and socio-material implications connected to it. Therapeutic education is thus reduced to a mere list of prescriptions unrelated to the patient’s own history and to the context in which he lives, therefore becoming difficult to comply with. A representative case study is type 1 diabetes, a chronic disease with increasing incidence all over the world and in which the process of learning how to self-manage it, becomes essential for the survival of the individual. This paper intends to highlight how a socio-material approach on the self-management practices of the disease allows to identify new perspectives of educational action in the treatment of chronicity, starting from the results of a qualitative empirical research that intends to study the formative effects produced by the self-management practices on the adult diabetic patient. The research is based on the experiences of adult type 1 diabetic patients, collected through in-depth interviews and analyzed by following the Actor-Network Theory, the theoretical and methodological reference framework for the investigation. It highlights the socio-material character of the self-management practice and the active role of artifacts within the intricate network of elements nece

In autumn 2019 the Embodied Pedagogy research group of the University of Milan-Bicocca started a qualitative inquiry, commissioned by “Biodanza Italia” Association and AIPOB – International Professional Association of Biodanza Operators Rolando Toro System – aimed at investigating the pedagogical value of Biodanza methodology in Primary School contexts. This paper intends to retrace the design, the structural and the implementation phases of this qualitative research. The study followed a Cooperative Inquiry methodology with a training footprint, to enhance the specific contribution of teachers involved in the research process. The research observation area was the exchanging plan between workshop and daily teaching. It was planned not to evaluate the impact of Biodanza workshops through direct children observations at the gym or in the classroom. The assumption followed in the research was that a laboratory reverberates its value in the class life also through teacher’s ability to use that moment as a special point of view and as opportunity to work on issues observed from a decentralized perspective. For this reason, the design of the research system made teachers involved as co-researchers, in search of traces of exportability from the laboratory context to the classroom. A research-training structure – practical and theoretical – was created in the first phase of the research process to provide participants specific tools centered on Biocentric education: affectivity, embodied education and mutual listening. After this training phase started the Biodanza workshops addressed to children and at the same time the meeting phase between the researcher (author of this contribution) and the teachers involved through interviews and focus groups. Although the inquiry has stopped due to the Sars-CoV-2 pandemic, just when the first significant developments in educational and didactic terms were appearing, the research directions that emerged from the analysis of the data c

With a focus on adult’s role in physical play, in particular rough and tumble play, we will present our initial data from our teacher’s and educator’s focus groups and we will discuss a selection of relevant play scenarios. This paper regards an initial pilot study about the adult’s role in physical play in an ECEC service to detect and record adult’s (teachers, educators and atelierista) ideas about rough-and-tumble-play in order to define a hypothesis. This pilot study involves teachers (2-6) in the infant-toddler center and Preschool Bambini Bicocca, supported by Bambini Bicocca S.r.l (https://bambinibicocca.it) a spin-off of the University of Milano-Bicocca. They are part of an experimental 0-6 process within the framework of a holistic, inclusive educational approach [1], [2]. The initial data are relevant to analyze and promote quality processes and it is a way to reflect teachers’ skills in observing children and constitutes a source of criteria in planning professional development [3], [4], [5]. Paradigm, methodology and methods: the pilot study adopts a qualitative and phenomenological paradigm and combines observations and focus group discussions with atelierista, teachers and educators. We will present some examples from Focus group analysis using NVivo software. Implications, practice or policy: to promote dialogue between teachers and educators, the co-construction of representations of development in line with the potential of children; to recognize guidelines for professional development. The study refers to theories of play in early childhood and development and to more recent perspectives introduced in the field by [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11]. Play is a broad concept that can be viewed from a range of theoretical and conceptual viewpoints and can therefore be observed and interpreted in many different ways. The intrinsic value of play as significant socio-cultural activity for children is characterized by: freedom, choice, participation and inclu

This paper describes the profound changes made to the Department of Human Sciences’ academic guidance program as a result of the COVID-19 public health emergency. Given that the program is an integral part of Milano-Bicocca University’s overall education plan, the pandemic triggered the need to radically modify the format and contents of its various components. A range of methods were adopted to reach out to secondary school students and provide them with essential information and opportunities to familiarize themselves with university life, thereby enabling them to make informed choices. The first step undertaken by the Department’s Academic Guidance team was to adapt the existing calendar of activities and convert all the in-person events scheduled from May onwards into livestreamed events that were also recorded and remained available for viewing on the university website. As well as this shift to a distance mode of delivery, the Department’s entire guidance program was revisited: additional encounters were designed for high school students; these offered thematic presentations of disciplinary content and university teaching methods as well as practical information. While the online sessions were shorter than the on-campus events they were replacing, they were designed ad hoc to maximise dialogue and interaction between presenters and audience. Especial care was taken to ensure that the program was effective from a communications point of view, particularly by offering multimedia information content that was clear and user-friendly. This paper illustrates how guidance may be interpreted as an opportunity for learning and personal/professional growth, underpinned by the adoption of a reflexive stance that will help students to make more mindful choices when defining their educational and career identities.

This paper examines how the tutoring service for first year students offered by Milano-Bicocca University since 2013 has successfully continued to provide academic support during the health, economic, and social crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the early years of the service’s functioning – initially offered on four of the University’s degree courses – it was deemed necessary to develop a new, broader perspective on academic guidance that contemplated the involvement of “peer” as well as teacher tutors. This revolutionary and innovative change in the tutoring process meant that senior students were co-opted onto the guidance project to offer the benefit of their own experience in coping with the challenges of first year at university. The tutoring programme team provided participating senior students with ad hoc training and supervised them as they conducted individual and group activities with first year students. Thanks to this strategy, the service was eventually extended to the students of almost all the university’s degree programmes: in the 2019/2020 academic year, around 100 peer tutors worked with students on over 20 bachelor’s degree courses. The positive results obtained to date in terms of student involvement and investment in tutor education underpinned the university’s recent decision to make tutoring available to students on master’s degree courses also, beginning in 2020/2021. In the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and the complexity and uncertainty it has generated, the tutoring service has been reorganized and largely redesigned; more specifically, given the suspension of on-campus teaching alongside other restrictive measures, tutoring activities are now delivered remotely, via a mixture of live and offline formats. This paper offers a detailed description of the various components of the tutoring service offered during the complex and challenging COVID-19 emergency. These components have been designed to: meet current societal

In the literature we can find many examples showing the difficulty of students in solving mathematical problems. In particular, according to many authors, the critical aspect is precisely the ability to "making sense" of the problems to be solved (e.g. see de Corte, Greer, Verschaffel, 2000). From our point of view, it is not likely to gain an improvement of students' skills if we do not act adequately on teacher training. A first necessary condition is that teachers must be able to adequately solve the tasks that are usually proposed to students. For this reason, in the "Mathematics teaching" courses for the primary school prospective teacher training program at the University of Milano-Bicocca we discuss and promote a PBL (Problem-Based learning) model. These courses combine theoretical lectures with practical activities (for example the didactic pedagogical laboratories described in previous IATED conferences). One of the main topics of such courses is precisely a discussion of the idea of "problem", as opposed to the idea of "exercise" (Schoenfeld, 1992), and of the didactic potential of a teaching practice that makes good use of problems. At the end of the course we tested prospective primary school teachers with a classic problem on proportionality combined with a typical examples of pseuso-proportional problems, for which the inadequacy of the proportional model should emerge. We proposed the task to 57 prospective teachers, asking them to give an explicit and detailed resolution of the problems and to carry out an analysis of the teaching potential of such problems for primary school students. In this paper, we present a qualitative analysis of the answers collected. From such an analysis, inconsistencies between the theoretical model described at lectures and the practical application emerge for many students. In some cases students explicitly admit to have adapted their answers to the "didactic contract". The observations collected allowed us to rethink so

The importance of an active engagement of students in the learning process is nowadays recognised as a central aspect for a successful teaching practice. Many researchers highlight that teaching through games is a very effective way to involve pupils, especially in primary school. Indeed, the methodology of Game Based Learning not only stimulates students’ interest, but increases their motivation and satisfaction, making it easier to understand and remember new concepts. This is particularly relevant for Mathematics, where learning a new rule through experimentation leads to a better understanding. Such a methodology becomes even more powerful when combined with the use of the so-called “new technologies”. We developed a proposal for a web-based mathematical “turnkey” game environment for primary school pupils, using the WIMS system. The WIMS system (WWW Interactive Multipurpose Server, https://wims.matapp.unimib.it/), conceived by Xiao Gang and made public in 1998, is now in widespread use throughout France and is slowly spreading to other countries. It is available in various languages, and it is recognized for its vitality and effectiveness as a server for publishing interactive learning objects. One of its advantages is that its activities can be offered to the user with no need to install any additional software on the local pc (or on any mobile device) other than a standard web browser. Also, teachers can create virtual classes to propose activities to students and actively monitor their works. Obviously, WIMS can be a very useful tool for distance learning. The aim of this work is to present an activity on elementary cryptography through games. Our proposal consists of essentially two parts. The first activity challenges the students with the problem of ciphering and deciphering secret messages, taking inspiration from Caesar code. The second part involves a game inspired by modern cryptography techniques, such as Hamming codes for error correction. It is pre

Education is at the heart of global development goals, catalysing advancement towards other aims such as decreased poverty and inequality. This goal has led to a heightened demand for higher education (HE) globally and has transformed internationalisation from a useful add-on to a core strategic pillar for all universities aspiring to global significance. In turn, there is increasing pressure on academics and HE internationalisation strategies to prepare students for real world employment contexts in which cross boundary teams are becoming increasingly prevalent. Key Tensions and Conflicts: Curriculum designs and assessment practices of academics are therefore under scrutiny, creating tensions between standardisation and measurability and the development of creative and reflective learners who are capable of working in varied cultural contexts. Of concern, international research indicates that while university-based diversity exists, genuine inclusion does not. Consistent with these global trends, the teaching staff within an Australian University, experienced increasing levels of hostility between domestic and international students within summative assessments, particularly for domestic, credential-focused, graduating students within a post-Global Financial Crisis employment environment. Intervention Objectives: While there is converging evidence that the success of collaborative learning activities in culturally diverse small teams is sensitive to the contextual conditions in which the actual encounter occurs, there is a paucity of empirical work on the impact of learning contexts on students' attitudes towards intercultural interactions. To address cross-boundary hostilities by creating psychologically safe learning environments where students can express themselves individually and find a place within their new communities, a targeted intervention process was designed and actioned. Methodology: Employing culturally respons

In this paper, I present a multidisciplinary research project entitled Mobartech, which was sponsored by the Lombardy Region as part of a broader initiative co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). The overall aim of this project was to develop an innovative method of engaging the general public in the study, conservation, and consumption of cultural heritage. It was jointly conducted by several partners, including four departments of the University of Milan Bicocca (UNIMIB). One of the project’s concrete objectives was to set up a mobile van (a mini-laboratory) with the dual mission of conducting scientific research and disseminating cultural knowledge, while visiting small museums and works of art at different locations across the region. In the initial pilot phase of the project, three case studies were conducted, involving: 1) an individual painting, The Fourth Estate by Pellizza da Volpedo (1901); 2) frescoes from the Giotto period at the Palazzo dell'Arcivescovado in Milan; 3) the UNESCO world heritage site of Mantua and Sabbioneta. UNIMIB’s Department of Human Sciences and Education was present at the UNESCO site with the role of raising locals’ and tourists’ awareness of the cultural/historical links between the two cities and enhancing their cultural knowledge about these towns. Specifically, we offered an informal education path that involved members of the public in acts of consumption, participation, and interpretation. The project phases included: initial familiarization with the local area by administering questionnaires; interviews with key informants (architects, restorers, guides, ceramists, photographers, ...); targeted observations; discovery and exploration of the site with a variety of audiences; and finally, the design of a guided discovery kit for the two cities. Participants in the project included groups of middle and high school students, including some on educational work placements, who worked with the researchers to

We write this paper at a time of worldwide crisis due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. University teaching has also been dramatically impacted, and for perhaps the first time, we have had to radically modify our on-campus courses so that they may be followed using exclusively e-learning methods. In relation to our General Didactics module, previously offered in both on-campus and blended learning formats, we have risen to the challenge by completely redesigning the course content and activities, while striving to maintain constant interaction both with and among our students. The entire academic staff of the Degree course in Primary Education at the University of Milan Bicocca received initial training in the use of the university’s e-learning platform and its resources. This has been followed by a phase of individual experimentation and discussion with colleagues, and finally an evaluation phase. A key criterion from the outset was that the online classes should be relatively short and not exclusively verbal, but rather should take the form of discrete "instalments" of learning content, focused on clearly defined topics. Learning contents were also to be presented in such a way as to elicit the students’ active engagement, both individually and in groups. In this paper, we outline how we proceeded to redesign both module formats in terms of their content and the use of online tools including forums, chats, and repositories. Our analysis of how the new modules have evolved (and are still evolving) includes the feedback of the students themselves in relation to the new distance modes of delivery and the changes underway in education more generally.

The paper intends to illustrate, from a pedagogic point of view, the hidden educational role of technology in the socio-medical area, and, in particular, in the practices of self-management of type 1 diabetes. This role is underlined by the results of a qualitative empirical research that intends to study the formative effects produced by the use of two different technical objects – insulin pen and pump – on adult diabetic patients.

The contribution offers a pedagogical reflection on some of the challenges the Italian school had to address in the forced transition from face-to-face learning to distance learning. The challenges have been identified by using a rights-based lens, specifically by focusing on those rights that the document “Didattica a distanza e diritti degli studenti. Mini-guida per docenti” (Distance learning and rights of the learners. Mini-guide for teachers) of the Ministry of Education and of the Autorità Garante (child ombudsman) highlight [1]. The contribution is framed by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989, art.28), the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (SDG 4) and by the UNESCO initiative Futures of Education: Learning to become [2] which see education, in a changing world, as the foundation for the construction of a just, equitable, tolerant, open and socially inclusive society. In 2020 the Covid-19 pandemic started challenging this political and pedagogical project by igniting unprecedented events, amongst which the gradual global closure of schools. In Italy 10,876,792 learners have been affected by school closures until the end of the academic year [3]. Classes continued through distance learning. In order to support distance education, a methodological and practical guide for teachers based on children’s rights was created. It focuses on the rights to: non-discrimination (art.2), participation (art.12), freedom of expression (art.13), adequate standards of living (art.27) and the right to education itself (art.28). Despite the formal recognition of rights, CISMAI denounced their substantial violation [4] during the pandemic. Furthermore children, families, educators and teachers expressed feeling abandoned, left behind [5] and researchers are bringing attention to a ‘new’ way of conceiving the digital divide, that manifested itself only with the absence of an in-person relationship: the relational digital divide [6]. It doesn’t o

The contribution pedagogically reflects on the role child-led policy plays in the construction of a rights based school culture. It is grounded in the experience of collaboration between Children’s Parliament in Scotland and Manor Park Primary School in Aberdeen, Scotland (UK). The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (art.12) and the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development recognize child participation as a core principle both for understanding the meanings of childhood and for creating an inclusive, equitable and just society. School is an ideal context for promoting child participation as it is the basic context of growing up and learning in our society. However, a school culture in which children’s right to participation is ensured is rarely observed across the world. This for many reasons: children may not be considered as capable to participate in decisionmaking [1]; teachers may not have an adequate knowledge of children’s rights [2] and/or may perceive them as a threat to their authority and control over the classroom [3]. In 2016, when Children’s Parliament began their partnership with Manor Park, the primary school was a place where children’s human rights were not being respected, which was reflected in their position as primary school with the highest level of exclusions across Scotland and as one of Aberdeen’s lowest attaining ones. A change in headteacher in 2017, and an attention from the senior leadership (SLT) team for the learner's well-being, led to the collaboration with Children’s Parliament to create a child-led vision for the school, which was underpinned by what children need to be happy, healthy and safe and the idea of human dignity. The collaboration with Manor Park intensifies because of a shared understanding of the importance of integrating children’s human rights and democratic practices into the school. The expedient to do so is embodied by a specific form of pedagogical documentation: policies made by the children

In this paper, I examine the changes encountered by museums during the COVID-19 pandemic. As in all affected countries and regions, museums in Milan and Lombardy were forced to close during the public health emergency, meaning that visitors could no longer physically access their spaces. Consequently, many museums began to reflect on their role, and to inquire whether and how they could restore the connection with their audiences and communities. After providing an overview of how museums in the Lombardy region responded to the crisis, I focus on a professional development course delivered by myself (a professor at the Department of Human Sciences and Education at Milano-Bicocca university) and a research fellow to a group of museum educators from Milan’s civic museums: the aim of the course was to elicit reflection on possible means of responding to the needs of the local community in the context of museum closures. The course involved observing various practices being implemented by Italian and international museums - and specifically those targeting children, including both livestreaming events and other online initiatives - and initiating equivalent actions in the participating museums’ own cultural fields. I outline the course format and the main ideas that emerged from it.

This paper offers a first-hand account of university teaching during the recent public health emergency, with a specific focus on laboratories. In late-February 2020, the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy, which was particularly severe in the Lombardy region, led the government and national health authorities to suspend all on-site teaching-learning activities in schools and universities. Here, I take a preliminary look at how these measures were applied to the General Didactics module of the Degree Course in Primary Education offered by the University of Milano-Bicocca. While the abrupt switch from classroom to distance learning methods represented a radical change and prompted the complete redesign of course structure, content and materials, laboratories were particularly strongly affected. Laboratories - together with teaching practice - are a core component of the degree course in primary education, which delivers basic training to future infant and primary school teachers: they are key because they provide student teachers with opportunities to connect theory and practice. Students are divided into groups of 30 max. for three four-hour sessions on different course themes and are invited to reflect on the real-life implications of their course work for children at school. The moderators are teachers, who conduct a series of activities that have been agreed in advance with the group; they continuously invite the student teachers to relate the contents of the workshop to the practices they themselves implemented during their internships in schools. As with all laboratories, being physically present and in physical contact with others, while conducting group activities and then collectively reflecting on them have traditionally been key to transforming theoretical hypotheses into shared meta-reflections. Due to the COVID-19 lockdown, the laboratory component of the module was converted into a cycle of online sessions with the laboratory moderators, who received ad hoc tra

In this article we want to present two experiences related to different kind of cultural heritage and its fruition. In these cases, a set of concrete proposals was used, combined with the utilize of new technologies, with the intention of enhancing both possibilities. First of all, we intend to clarify the concept of education in the field of the fruition of cultural heritage (tangible and intangible), as the activation of a different participation and involvement in which the voice of the participants is taken into account and shared. In the first case, we want to retrace the path of knowledge of the landscape heritage in which the University of Milan Bicocca is located. In this case has been the subject of a series of discovering walks dedicated to students and citizens. After many experiences over the years, with the use of many tools (photographic, visual, literary ...) we wanted to research a different way of conceiving this project by experiencing personally the experimentation carried out in Parma by the artist Ettore Favini, who has chosen in his artistic proposal to include a technological mapping. This kind of proposal has made it possible to enhance both the collective contribution and the individual experiences and has opened subsequent reflections and proposals for new actions. The second project is dedicated to a research related to the UNESCO site of Mantua and Sabbioneta. Here, real and virtual materials have been designed and created, with the same aim: the activation of a different form of participation by citizens and tourists. The proposals for these tools were born through a path made with students of a high school and with some privileged witnesses related to the history of the city. The aim was to create a kit to improve the fruition of the two cities and to perceive their unitary spirit. The small actions realized in the two projects allowed to initiate a more in-depth reflection on what, within informal education paths, can also be produced

In recent academic years, the Blended General Didactics course of the Degree course in Primary Education has tried to renew the teaching and learning methods. In addition to increasing the actions and materials carried out within the moodle space, an aspect that was taken into account was that related to the face-to-face lessons. In these lessons the choice of new materials and more interactive methodologies led to the identification of the flipped lesson as one of the methodologies with more potential. The desire to activate more incisively the participation of students, who are mostly workers in this particular course, was one of the points taken into account to initiate this change.

The new decade has begun providing the most unimaginable scenario. The COVID-19 pandemic outbreak has shattered life as we know it. In a matter of days, what is first and foremost a health crisis has also led to an educational crisis as country after country ordered early childhood education and care (ECEC) and school closures. In Italy, one of the first and more severely affected countries, the government has issued a series of measures to stem the spread of the coronavirus, culminating in the closure of economic, social and cultural activities, and in particular of school and educational services for children (February-June 2020). As children, teachers and educators suddenly became homebound, education did not stop. Teaching-learning processes moved online, behind a screen. Although experimented on an untested and unprecedented scale, distance education allowed restoring – at least partially – the severed communication and relationships among educators, teachers, children, and families, tackling the prolonged educational and social deprivation experienced with the emergency. It was also an occasion to rethink and reshape pedagogical practices, and to discover new resources, both at the instrumental and relational level. On the other hand, this unprecedented challenge raised new difficulties and exacerbated already existent fragilities of the Italian educational system in its ability to reach and support all children and especially those from weaker socio-economic backgrounds. The present contribution, set within the broader research project Education for Social Justice (E4SJ), explores those issues through a set of qualitative interviews conducted with Italian ECEC and primary school teachers and educators. Professionals’ voices offer significant insights and contribute to the discussion on this topic.

In an educational system still widely based on textual information, books, and writing tasks dyslexia is one of the difficulties that some students face during the school years. Dyslexia is commonly considered a complex learning disability affecting reading and writing performances, in particular, the way people interpret words, letters, and other symbols. Nevertheless, it doesn't influence general intelligence. Different studies underline how it depends on various factors both genetic and environmental, often connected with other conditions such as ADHD, dyscalculia or dysgraphia. According to Firth, reading and writing skills are learned using three different strategies respectively based on logographic, alphabetical and orthographic abilities. In the last case, the more complex, the text is analyzed as a string of specific letters and the sense is independent of the context. On the other hand, writing is the visual translation of linguistic signs through conventional graphic representation with shared meanings. Therefore, human beings approach reading from childhood, learning to see means, being able to recognize the shapes of letters drawn on a sheet of paper or a digital display and give them a meaning. The perception of the letters and the comprehension of the message encoded by them refers both to readability and legibility concepts. In particular, legibility is related to the visual perception of a text and the ability to distinguish a single character. In the last few years, different experiments have been conducted to understand which fonts were more legible or helpful for dyslexic people and how to improve their learning abilities. Besides, under a more inclusive mindset, some designers have tried to draw and implement more accessible fonts, and some educational publishers have included the issue in their editorial process. The paper presents and discusses the more significant research projects, proposing a critical comparison of the more relevant experim

This paper aims at offering a theoretical reflection on child participation’s meanings and strategies in Residential Care Centers (hereafter RCC). The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development intends on investing in children, viewing them as contributors to the construction of a more just, equitable, tolerant, open and socially inclusive world. The UN manifesto also emphasizes the need to strive for a nurturing environment in which children can fully realize their rights and capabilities [1]. Hence, it is vital to reflect on the meanings and strategies of child participation in alternative care settings [2] where children are more vulnerable by definition and often precluded from contributing to the decisions concerning their lives [3] [4], although mechanisms to ensure their participation have been implemented [5]. Ensuring children’s participation, especially younger children’s participation, in the child protection system is challenging for practitioners, as it requires balancing their institutional mandate as adults in charge of protecting the child (which entails dynamics of power and authority) with the need to competently foster the child’s own participation as a key form of intervention against violence, also institutional violence [6] Goffman [7], and as a form of prevention of, and a strategy for coping with, adverse childhood experiences. Hence, RCC practitioners require specific professional competence if they are to understand the meanings and value of child participation and encourage its practice, especially when dealing with younger children, in their educational relationship with the child. Thus, there is a need to identify forms and strategies of participation, sustainable both for practitioners (taking into account their institutional mandate and the associated constraints) and for children (in light of their particular stage of development and their specific life stories). The paper will present a reflection on the international pol

Over the past two decades in Italy there have been multiple and pervasive social, cultural and economic transformations, some of which have had and still have a significant impact on the educational field, both scholastic and extra-scholastic. In some cases, such transformations have generated conflicting and problematic relations between educational systems and political systems. One of the issues that causes more concern in educational services and generates considerable tensions between these and the institutional partners with which they collaborate is related to the process of service evaluation run by the political administrations. As a matter of fact, each service is obliged to provide official documentation on the educational work carried out. This documentation is subsequently delivered to external bodies, such as the Region or the Municipality, who evaluate the service based on what has been communicated through these formal documents. The communication exchange between political and educational systems is not free from conflict, fear and ambiguity. In fact, in many cases the educational services seem to be guided by languages, expectations, logics, rules, standards, communication and evaluation criteria that are quite different from those prevailing in the political institutions with which they interact. For instance, the institutions, differently from services, are more likely to evaluate results rather than processes, and tend to adopt quantitative rather than qualitative criteria. The services thus start looking for communication strategies that take into account the need to mediate with the expectations of their institutional partners, without however remaining subjugated. This situation does not only produce constant tensions between political and educational systems, causing discomfort and anxiety in services, but also modifies the pedagogical and organizational cultures in often unexpected directions. By briefly referring to a research on the evalu

School educational practices are a complex tangle of social and material elements. Nevertheless, educational researches in schools consider objects and artefacts as mere and largely passive tools at the service of human aims. Often scholars focus on the relationship between teacher and student, teaching methods, classroom discourse analysis, features and quality of student learnings, learning outcomes, curriculum of studies. Whereas the material elements that, together with the human subjects daily perform the school practice remain as an inert background to which it doesn't seem necessary to give a properly pedagogic attention. From this perspective the educational action runs the risk of becoming a matter concerning and involving human subjects exclusively. Also school change and innovation processes risk to be reduced to the mere learning of how to employ teaching techniques, or at most, as "ready to use tools" like when new technologies are adopted. This reflects the common view that teaching is an innate quality or a property of an individual teacher. The agency or the ability to act - making a difference - remains a characteristic of the human being only.Purpose of the article is to address these issues by adopting a sociomaterial stance that focuses on how materiality performs in everyday school practices. In particular, the paper will illustrate, through some examples from the outcomes of an empirical research conducted in a North Italian Waldorf School with the Actor-Network Theories (ANT), how human and non-human elements (artefacts, discourses, times, procedures, bodies, symbols, students and teachers) weaved together enact educational practices and what we call "school". From an epistemological and methodological point of view this theoretical research sensitivity allows a more articulated, complete and accurate description of the educational practices and of the scholastic context. In particular, it allows to explore and take into consideration the role

It is widely recognized that mentors and tutors are empowering roles in education systems. Students can benefit to be raised in an inclusive environment in which senior peers or professors play a positive and significant role model. In particular, looking at the field of design studies, a tradition of collaborative and collective culture shared between students and teachers can be identified both in the Bauhaus and in the Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm experiences. In more recent time, studies show how junior designers benefit from the presence, and the confront of significant grown-up or more experienced figures able to listen to, to coach and to mentor them. Nevertheless, when we look at the issue from a gender perspective, we may notice a lack of examples and reference figures, even if female students are a significant percentage, when not the majority, in the design’s bachelors and masters degrees university courses. Moreover, in Italy – at the 82 place on 144 in the worldwide ranking for gender equality and women rights according to the “Global Gender Gap Index 2017” – the situation seems to be more difficult than in the other European or developed countries, also due to the representation of female roles in society and female bodies in mass media. On the one hand, the paper offers a deeper insight into the problem. The results of a census in the field of digital product design – including human-centered, interaction, user experience and interface design – are mapped and discussed to understand the presence of female professors and their role in BA/BS and MD courses. On the other hand, the paper proposes some possible initiatives to spread consciousness and participation and to improve some changes in academic design culture.

The notion of virtual mobility has gained prominence not only in the field of distance education. Virtual mobility is entrenched in the idea to enable students to exchange and collaborate with teachers and fellow students from other countries by the means of the latest information and communication technologies (ICT). In this paper, we argue that especially non-traditional students regularly found in distance education can benefit from virtual mobility as they are normally omitted from regular exchange programs. However, hitherto there is little empirical data about how to best implement virtual mobility in courses in distance education. We therefore present our own experiences with developing a university course which implemented virtual mobility. The course brings together students from two Master programmes in Finland and Germany. We used the ADDIE model which allowed us to tailormade the course striving to enhance the learning experience of the students. Seamless learning, problem-based learning and peer-assessment were implemented as activities to spur the students’ interaction and thereby enriching their experience with virtual mobility. The results of our evaluation are twofold. First, students indicate a high level of satisfaction with the instructional course design, the different activities and the collaboration with fellow students from abroad. Second, the results suggest that students need additional assistance as well as skill improvement and training to be able to perform eLearning. In a nutshell, the ADDIE model proved to be valuable for instructional course design by allowing testing and evaluating the merits and risks of a course with virtual mobility.

Big data is an emerging field of research and many organizations especially governments, business and health care currently use them to make informed decisions. Millions of generated data are unstructured and come in a variety of formats. Nowadays, data technologies make possible to collect and store large and complex amounts of data and then to turn them into meaningful patterns. In higher education, there is limited research into big data despite it would bring opportunities to inform decisions and to identify potential issues related to policies, programs, teaching, learning and research. When learners interact with a digital device (smartphone, tablet or laptop) data about their interactions are easily “logged” and so can be used for further analysis. The trails that students leave behind can be analyzed and could reveal social connections, behaviors, preferences and goals. A large field of research opens to identify patterns and deviations from patterns, addressing some of the key challenges facing higher education. Spanish Universities have deployed different platforms to support teaching and learning. An important part of the teachers still uses the digital environment as a sort of digital photocopy service. However, some teachers make an advanced use of the virtual campus with tasks, exams, wikis and forums and other activities. The Universidad Complutense of Madrid has started some actions to allow the analysis of the students’ interactions and to examine patterns of students’ performance. We describe in this paper one of these pilot experiences focused on Human Histology, a subject in the second year of the Medicine Degree. Three are the main aims of this experience. First of all, to propose a working methodology to gather the data, to define the metrics and to set up the indicators that may be useful to identify patterns in the undergraduate students’ learning. Secondly, to evaluate the results in order to make better decisions that achieve better outcome, Big data es un campo de investigación emergente y son numerosas las organizaciones, es especial, gobiernos, empresas y aseguradoras médicas que lo tienen en cuenta a la hora de tomar decisiones. Los millones de datos que se generan están desestructurados y se facilitan en distintos formatos. Sin embargo, hoy en día las tecnologías hacen posible recopilar y almacenar cantidades enormes de datos y procesarlos para obtener patrones. En la educación superior, la investigación en Big data es bastante limitada a pesar de que podría ser fuente de información importante para la toma de decisiones e identificar aspectos relevantes en la política, los programas, la docencia, el aprendizaje y la investigación. Cuando los usuarios interaccionan con un dispositivo digital (smartphone, tableta o portátil) las interacciones se registran y quedan almacenadas como logs, que pueden ser posteriormente analizados. Las universidades españolas han implementado distintas plataformas de apoyo a la docencia. Aunque una parte importante de profesores sigue empleando los espacios virtuales como meros repositorios digitales, otros hacen un uso avanzado mediante tareas, cuestionarios, wikis, foros y otras actividades. La Universidad Complutense de Madrid ha empezado a facilitar el análisis de las interacciones de los estudiantes y a analizar los patrones del uso realizado. En esta comunicación se describe una de las experiencias piloto, centrada en la Organografía Microscópica Humana, asignatura de segundo curso del Grado en Medicina. En esta experiencia se plantearon tres objetivos. El primero, proponer una metodología de trabajo para agregar datos, definir métricas y establecer indicadores útiles en la identificación de patrones en el aprendizaje de los estudiantes de grado. El segundo, evaluar los resultados para tomar decisiones que permitan mejorar el rendimiento. Por último, reflexionar sobre las métricas y los indicadores útiles en otras materias y áreas de conocimiento.

Human Histology is a second-year compulsory subject of the Medicine Degree at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Practical is focused on observation of histological slides to train students in recognizing general and differential microscopic characteristics of organs, laying the foundation for Pathology learning in the third-year. The Bologna plan involved a dramatic reduction in the number of practice hours, which along with the main role of the students in the European Higher Education Area, highlight the need to implement the practical part, particularly methodologies and the evaluation system. Teachers have been required to dedicate more time and effort for creating educational materials, designing individual or group tasks and learning virtual platforms environments. Students have taken an active role with works, presentations and peer-evaluations. Nevertheless, seven courses after the introduction of the new medical curriculum, it has become evident that a large proportion of students does not use practical scripts nor consult the recommended bibliography, and so they go to practical sessions without knowing aims and tasks. In order to boost practical and to achieve a more effective work in the classroom, minitests were included in each session. They consisted of short tests with projected images asking for the organs, their histological features and staining techniques. Minitests were planned at the beginning of each session. Participation in the minitests would be voluntary but teachers graded them. Provided a continued participation, the minitests’ grades could result in one extra point, but a final exam mark 7 out of 10 is required for adding the extra bonus. Therefore, only those students who demonstrate a good knowlegde in the final exam would benefit from the minitests’ mark. A Minitest Survey was set up at the end of the practical part to find out the level of satisfaction of the students. The following course, minitests were moved to the end of ea, Organografía Microscópcia Humana es una asignatura obligatoria de segundo curso del Grado en Medicina de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Las prácticas se centran en la observación de preparaciones histológicas para que los estudiantes aprendan a reconocer las características generales y diferenciales de de los órganos, base esencial para la Anatomía Patológica de tercer curso. Con el plan Bolonia se produjo una reducción drástica del número de horas de prácticas a la par que los estudiantes debían asumir el rol principal. Ello puso de manifiesto la necesidad de implementar la parte práctica, en particular, las metodologías docentes y el sistema de evaluación. Tras la convergencia en el Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior, los profesores han debido dedicar mucho tiempo y esfuerzo a elaborar materiales didácticos creativos, a diseñar tareas individuales o en grupo y a aprender el manejo de plataformas virtuales. Por su parte, los estudiantes han ido tomando un rol más activo mediante las tareas, las presentaciones y la evaluación por pares. Sin embargo, siete cursos después de la implantación del nuevo plan de estudios, se ha podido constatar que una amplia proporción de alumnos no consultaba los guiones de prácticas ni la bibliografía recomendada, por lo que acudían a las sesiones de prácticas sin conocer los objetivos ni las tareas en cada una. A fin de impulsar las prácticas y lograr un trabajo más productivo en el aula, se decidió incluir minitests en cada sesión. Cada minitest es una prueba corta de imágenes en las que se pregunta no solo el órgano sino sobre distintas características histológicas y tinciones empleadas. Al comienzo de cada sesión se llevó a cabo un minitest. La realización de minitests fue voluntaria pero las pruebas eran puntuables. A aquellos estudiantes que participaran de forma continuada en los ministests, la nota lograda en ellos podría traducirse en hasta 1 punto extra en la nota final de prácticas, siempre y cuando la nota en el e

Political, cultural and economic transformations that characterize the contemporary society impact the school, significantly. Therefore, as John Dewey stated, school is the educational institution that reproduces, in a simplified form, the issues qualifying the related social context in which it operates. Changes, within the current scenario, modify the teaching-learning experiences, the interactions between the generations, just like all the interactive relationships between school and family. These relationships, in particular, have become really critic and, in fact, it needs considerable pedagogical attention, if we want to promote a real educational partnership. The need for a shared strategy, between school and family, is not a recent phenomenon, but it represents a need that has always been essential, since these two experiences act significantly, within the child’s life. However, while this partnership assumed a specific configuration, till few years ago, that did not create particular problems, now it seems to get into a crisis. Starting from these premises, the paper purpose is to highlight both critical points, over the relationship between school and family, within the Italian context, and the strategies that can be selected to face the tensions, often generated when these two different educational realities touch each other. The paper will refer specifically to an action-research, carried out in two schools of Bergamo, a city in Northern Italy, as a part of the project named “Listening to promote. From the school of autonomy to the inclusive one: the quality of the school experience. Action-research on the inclusive school”. The paper will first present the context of the project and its theoretical and methodological framework, then it will analyze the main issues, recognized by teachers, as the critical aspects of the current relationship with families and, finally, it will identify those strategies able to allow us in starting a new cooperation betwee

This paper will present some pedagogical reflections on the training needs of professionals involved in childhood protection system, with regard to the leaving care phase of children and young people placed in residential care facilities. The considerations here illustrated are related to the qualitative analysis of the first results collected from the training course developed by SOS Children’s Villages Italy (within a wider partnership lead by SOS Children’s Villages International) as part of the two-year project Prepare for Leaving Care (co-funded by the Rights, Equality and Citizenship –REC-Programme of the European Commission, 2017-2018). This paper will present the results of the evaluation of Italian training courses realised during the past year in order to teach how to embed a child rights based approach into their daily work with focus on the leaving care phases. Finally, the paper will underlined how the training of professionals involved in childhood protection system is a pedagogical challenge [1] in terms of developing a multi-professional équipe and high level of competences –included emotional ones [2]– in order to sustain young people in developing their own project of life.

Background:Concept maps and knowledge maps have been used to promote meaningful learning by students. The traditional pen-and-paper approach to such maps requires manual grading that generates a heavy workload for time-poor educators. Current computer-based tools are unable to provide reliable feedback in a user-friendly online environment.Summary of Work:Our software, UNSW Knowledge Maps, is a cloud-based interactive knowledge mapping system. This system can be used to create, edit and share maps and students can receive automated graphical feedback in real-time. The system can be accessed without the installation of third party applications or plugins, increasing usability.Summary of Results:Preliminary studies indicate a high uptake by students enrolled in the Medicine program and Medical Science courses. With one group of students, our data demonstrates a significantly higher perception of understanding after using the maps. A second group of students show improved learning outcomes in a pre-test post-test study. Discussion:The trials conducted thus far demonstrate that UNSW Knowledge Maps is a readily accepted tool for concept and knowledge mapping by students. The native web-based interface enhances usability by lowering the barriers for uptake. Initial studies suggest that UNSW Knowledge Maps provides benefits for learning by medical students.Conclusions: Our preliminary data suggests that UNSW Knowledge Maps is a readily accepted and useful educational tool. We have also developed an assessment mode in which teachers can create activities with automated grading and feedback.Take-home Messages:UNSW Knowledge Maps is an online educational tool that fosters engagement in meaningful learning, critical thinking, and problem solving skills. While still in its early stages, we believe this tool could prove valuable for students in a variety of disciplines.