2,155 research outputs found
Towards Assessment as Learning. Findings from online courses for secondary school teachers
No full textToday’s school has to deal with several critical issues related to assessment, such as the excessive focus on grades and the lack of a shared understanding of assessment methods and aims. Assessment becomes formative when the evidence gathered is used to adapt teaching practice to pupils' learning needs. Teachers should move towards Assessment as Learning, characterised by appropriate tasks, development of evaluative competence, and the involvement of students in feedback processes. This contribution presents two online research-training courses on assessment in secondary schools. They involved 240 secondary school teachers and consisted of a training and a workshop session. Courses were mainly based on teacher involvement, allowing for recursive feedback processes. We analysed data from an entry questionnaire, a One Minute Paper submitted during the course, and the workshop. The data analysis highlights the main difficulties related to assessment, suggestions, and reflections of the participants. We noticed the importance of workshop and group work to reflect on the transformation of practices. Finally, the interaction with the teachers was indeed valuable in understanding the sustainability of the proposal and refining it
Age-related physiological and structural traits of chestnut coppices at the Castelli Romani Park (Italy)
No full textCoppices of Castanea sativa Miller (1, 5, 7, 10, 12, 17, 23, 26, and 30 years old stands) were investigated. Total basal area (BA) ranged from 4.9 +/- 1.9 m(2) ha(-1) (1 year old stands) to 41.0 +/- 2.3 m(2) ha(-1) (30 years old stands), and Leaf Area Index (LAI) from 0.18 +/- 0.08 m(2) m(-2) (1 year old stands) to 5.00 +/- 0.22 m(2) m(-2) (12 years old stands). Morphological and physiological leaf traits were analysed in 5 (YC) and 23 years old stands (OC) to point out the functional responses to clearing impact. The results pointed out the high productivity of C. sativa in the Park, due to favourable climatic and soil conditions. Significant differences of morpho-physiological leaf traits between YC and OC stands were observed during the last period of the vegetative cycle; it could be due to the higher efficiency in resource use of YC leaves than OC
Towards 2030. Enhancing 21st century skills through educational robotics
No full textRecent technological advances require new learning and teaching methods and a reform of traditional school curricula to promote STEM and 21st-century skills. Educational robotics is considered a powerful tool, not only to learn programing, but also to enhance soft and transversal skills, such as problem-solving, metacognition, divergent thinking, creativity, and collaboration. This contribution presents a one-year research project aimed at integrating maker education and educational robotics into the primary and lower secondary school curriculum. The project is developed through a multidisciplinary and longitudinal approach and adopts the Design-Based Implementation Research methodology. It involved 50 fourth and fifth grade Italian students until the following school year. As an integrating background theme, we chose the 17 Goals outlined by the UN in the 2030 Agenda. Each selected goal was addressed by solving challenges in groups. Educational robotics became a tool for learning many concepts, such as renewable energies, human body systems or states of matter, but especially for working on creativity and ability to design, build, collaborate, and revise. We investigated students’ attitude toward STEM and 21st-century skills and their perceived school self-efficacy administrating two questionnaires pre and post the two parts of the project. This paper discusses findings on students’ attitude toward 21st-century skills. In the post analyzes of both Part 1 and 2, this field showed the highest scores compared to STEM fields. The pre-post data show an improvement in organizational, interpersonal, and leadership skills from Part 1, but also a gradual increase in personal and management skills
Make it happen. L’approccio Maker per ripensare l’educazione nell’era post-digitale
No full textI sistemi educativi si trovano oggi a dialogare con gli elementi di complessità derivanti dalle rapide trasformazioni della società contemporanea. L’occupabilità e le competenze professionali sono notevolmente evolute dall’inizio del XXI secolo, con un’enfasi sulla creatività, il design e i processi ingegneristici. Il post-digitale si è immerso nel processo pedagogico, rompendo i confini dell’insegnamento e dell’apprendimento formale e informale e configurandosi come una delle grandi sfide del panorama educativo attuale. Tale scenario impone un ripensamento dei percorsi di insegnamento e apprendimento, privilegiando da un lato una progettazione flessibile e dall’altro una didattica per competenze, orientata a compiti situati, aperti e autentici, che integri efficacemente le tecnologie andando a colmare la distanza tra vita reale e proposte didattiche tradizionali. La natura aperta, collaborativa e sperimentale dei compiti si configura come elemento caratterizzante della Maker Education, in cui i discenti, nella veste di makers, costruiscono in modo attivo ed esperienziale le proprie conoscenze attraverso attività pratiche che combinano le abilità manuali con l’esercizio di competenze digitali. Tale approccio educativo viene infatti considerato come un’estensione tecnologica dell’attivismo, in grado di veicolare lo sviluppo delle competenze STEAM e del XXI secolo, implementando i principi dell’apprendimento project-based e hands-on e promuovendo un processo di progettazione partecipata fortemente “enattivo”.
Il presente testo mira a delineare un background teorico relativo alla Maker Culture e agli scenari emergenti nell’ambito della tecnologia per l’educazione, per illustrare poi un piano di sperimentazione messo a punto a partire da tali esigenze e basi teoriche. Il progetto pilota, svoltosi nell’ambito del dottorato di ricerca tra il gennaio del 2021 e l’aprile del 2022, si configura come una proposta di integrazione delle attività making nella didattica curricolare della scuola primaria e secondaria di primo grado al fine di rilevarne l’impatto su attitude verso le STEM e le abilità del XXI secolo degli studenti (Q1) e su autoefficacia scolastica percepita (Q2). Esso è stato in gran parte sviluppato durante il periodo di emergenza sanitaria Covid-19 e risulta suddiviso in due parti, coinvolgendo 53 studenti e cinque insegnanti in un percorso verticale orientato a pratiche laboratoriali e collaborative secondo un approccio multidisciplinare e longitudinale. A tal fine, abbiamo proposto sfide autentiche legate ai temi dell’Agenda 2030, volte a richiamare i contenuti curricolari e i contesti di vita degli alunni e a stimolare lo sviluppo delle competenze. Abbiamo inoltre scelto di adottare la Design-Based Implementation Research come principale metodologia di riferimento e di privilegiare una forma di valutazione as learning, rendendo gli studenti partecipi del processo valutativo. La valutazione del progetto è stata perseguita mediante l’utilizzo di strumenti quantitativi e qualitativi. Abbiamo infatti selezionato due questionari validati volti ad indagare le variabili sopra citate, da somministrare ad inizio e conclusione delle due fasi di progetto. Nel corso di ogni incontro, gli studenti hanno inoltre compilato dei diari di bordo con autovalutazioni e sulla base di questi ultimi è stata co-progettata con i docenti una rubric valutativa. Infine, al termine della prima parte, i docenti sono stati coinvolti in un focus group.
Il progetto ci ha consentito di impattare sulle life skills degli studenti, sollecitando le tre aree interconnesse di competenza delineate nell’European Framework “LifeComp” del 2020 e quelle descritte dal World Economic Forum nel 2015. Nei vari confronti pre-post, le abilità del XXI secolo hanno ottenuto i punteggi più elevati rispetto alle aree STEM indagate dal Q1. Se nei pre-post delle due parti notiamo uno sviluppo più consistente delle abilità legate alla sfera interpersonale, dal confronto più esteso emerge un rilevante incremento anche di quelle legate alla sfera personale. Le aree di miglioramento costanti sono riferibili alle abilità organizzative e di leadership, come confermato dagli esiti del Q2 sulle abilità per l’apprendimento autoregolato. Rispetto all’attitude verso le discipline STEM, gli studenti hanno mostrato una propensione più marcata per i campi dell’ingegneria e della tecnologia. Tuttavia, in tutti i confronti emerge un’attitude elevata verso le prospettive di miglioramento dell’andamento disciplinare nell’ambito matematico-scientifico e un progressivo sviluppo degli item relativi all’uso avanzato delle discipline in un futuro impiego. Infine, gli alunni hanno accresciuto anche la loro autoefficacia percepita verso le discipline scolastiche non attinenti all’ambito STEM.
I diari di bordo hanno posto ulteriore enfasi sullo sviluppo delle life skills degli studenti. In entrambe le parti del progetto, gli studenti mostrano dei buoni o ottimi livelli di autoefficacia rispetto al lavorare bene in gruppo, comunicare con chiarezza le proprie idee e controllare le emozioni nel confronto con gli altri. Rispetto all’intero percorso, i punteggi medi più elevati si riscontrano per l’utilizzo efficace di strumenti e informazioni e la capacità di lavorare bene in gruppo. Gli alunni hanno mostrato una consapevolezza sempre maggiore dei loro limiti e dei loro traguardi, ponendo il focus principalmente sulle proprie capacità relazionali, a conferma dell’impronta fortemente sociale delle attività making, ma anche su aspetti legati alla sfera personale e a quella dell’imparare ad imparare. La maggioranza dei propositi di miglioramento avanzati verteva infatti sulle dinamiche comunicative e collaborative all’interno del gruppo, oltre che sulla gestione delle risorse e dei tempi. Molte di queste osservazioni coincidono con quelle riferite dalle insegnanti in occasione del focus group, risultate estremamente preziose per una rimodulazione del percorso nell’ottica di una maggiore funzionalità e sostenibilità.
L’impatto positivo su autoefficacia e self-confidence degli studenti può ricondursi primariamente alla possibilità di assumere il ruolo di agenti attivi, incorporando i propri interessi e repertori di pratica e consolidando la tendenza al cosiddetto authorship learning. La tecnologia si è rivelata un prezioso strumento per apprendere numerosi concetti curricolari, ma soprattutto per consentire agli studenti di lavorare sulla loro creatività e sulla capacità di progettare, costruire, collaborare e rivedere. Inoltre, il collegamento diretto con problemi reali e la possibilità di ipotizzare, anticipare possibili scenari, testare e riformulare hanno fornito un forte stimolo per le competenze di problem-solving e problem-posing e la costruzione di nuovi significati. Ciò ha a sua volta favorito il coinvolgimento dei giovani alunni in un apprendimento più profondo delle STEM e un accesso “facilitato” e alternativo alla conoscenza scientifica.
Molti dei vantaggi educativi ricondotti all’approccio Maker hanno dunque trovato riscontro positivo negli esiti del progetto. Gli spazi maker si sono rivelati ambienti di apprendimento generativi di competenze, di nuove modalità di inclusione e di opportunità di innovazione scolastica.
Le esperienze raccolte e il progetto pilota si pongono l’obiettivo di avviare un processo di ripensamento e di riflessione sulle correnti pratiche educative, che appaiono ancora troppo spesso ancorate a schemi tradizionali poco conformi alla società attuale, caratterizzata da rapidi mutamenti e complessità. Il fine ultimo è indubbiamente quello di porre in evidenza luci e ombre, potenzialità e sfide di un approccio innovativo e “trasformativo” della didattica tradizionale, segnando un passo avanti nella ricerca in ambito educativo e individuando al contempo future direzioni da perseguire ed indagare.Today’s education systems have to deal with elements of complexity resulting from the rapid transformations of contemporary society. Employability and professional skills have evolved considerably since the beginning of the 21st century, with an emphasis on creativity, design, and engineering processes. The post-digital has “penetrated” the pedagogical process, breaking the boundaries of formal and informal teaching and learning and becoming one of the great challenges of today’s educational landscape. This scenario calls for a rethinking of teaching and learning paths, emphasizing flexible design and competence-based didactics, oriented towards situated, open, and authentic tasks, and effectively integrating technologies to bridge the gap between real life and traditional didactic proposals. Open, collaborative, and experimental tasks are distinctive features of Maker Education, in which learners, as makers, actively construct their own knowledge through practical activities that combine manual and digital skills. Indeed, this educational approach is considered as a technological extension of activism, capable of conveying the development of STEAM and 21st century skills, implementing the principles of project-based and hands-on learning and promoting a strongly "enactive" participatory design process.
This text aims to outline a theoretical background on Maker Culture and emerging scenarios in the field of technology for education, and then illustrate an experimentation plan developed from these needs and theoretical foundations. The pilot project, run as a PhD project between January 2021 and April 2022, provided a proposal for integrating making activities into the curricular teaching of primary and secondary schools to detect their impact on students’ attitude towards STEM and 21st century skills (Q1) and perceived school self-efficacy (Q2). It was mainly developed during the Covid-19 health emergency period and is divided into two parts, involving 53 students and five teachers in a vertical pathway oriented towards laboratory and collaborative practices following a multidisciplinary and longitudinal approach. To this end, we proposed authentic challenges related to the topics of the 2030 Agenda, designed to link with the curricular content and students’ life contexts and foster the development of skills. We also chose to adopt Design-Based Implementation Research as the main methodology and to promote a form of assessment ‘as’ learning, making students involved in the assessment process. Project evaluation was conducted using quantitative and qualitative data collection tools. Indeed, we selected two validated questionnaires aimed at investigating the above-mentioned variables, to be administered at the beginning and end of the two project phases. During each meeting, the students also filled in logbooks with self-assessments and, based on these, we co-designed an assessment rubric with the teachers. Finally, at the end of the first part, the teachers were involved in a focus group.
The project had an impact on students’ life skills, eliciting the three interconnected areas of competence outlined in the 2020 European Framework ‘LifeComp’ and those described by the World Economic Forum in 2015. In the various pre-post comparisons, 21st century skills scored higher than the STEM areas investigated by Q1. While the pre-posts of the two parts show a more consistent development of skills related to the interpersonal sphere, the extended comparison also shows a significant increase in skills related to the personal sphere. The consistent areas of improvement relate to organizational and leadership skills, as confirmed by the results of Q2 on self-regulated learning skills. Regarding attitude towards STEM subjects, students showed a more pronounced leaning towards the fields of engineering and technology. However, in all comparisons, we found a high attitude towards the perspectives of improved subject performance in the mathematical-scientific fields and a progressive development of the items related to advanced use of subjects in future employment. Finally, the students also increased their perceived self-efficacy towards non-STEM school subjects.
The logbooks placed further emphasis on the development of the students’ life skills. In both parts of the project, the students show good to very good levels of self-efficacy in working well in groups, communicating their ideas clearly, and controlling their emotions when interacting with others. Compared to the whole course, the highest average scores are found for the effective use of tools and information and the ability to work well in a group. The students showed an increasing awareness of their limits and goals, focusing mainly on their interpersonal skills, confirming the strongly social character of the making activities, but also on personal and learning-to-learn aspects. In fact, most of the students’ suggestions for improvement concerned communication and collaboration dynamics within the group, as well as resource and time management. Many of these observations coincide with those reported by the teachers during the focus group, which turned out to be extremely precious in redesigning the pathway with a view to greater functionality and sustainability.
The positive impact on students’ self-efficacy and self-confidence can primarily be explained by the possibility of being active agents, incorporating their own interests and practices and consolidating the tendency towards so-called authorship learning. Technology proved to be a valuable tool for learning many curricular concepts, but especially for enabling students to work on their creativity and ability to design, build, collaborate, and revise. Moreover, the direct link with real problems and the possibility to hypothesize, anticipate possible scenarios, test, and reformulate provided a strong stimulus for problem-solving and problem-posing skills and the construction of new understandings. This in turn fostered “facilitated” and alternative access to scientific knowledge and young students’ involvement in deeper STEM learning. Many of the educational benefits attributed to the Maker approach were thus positively reflected in the project outcomes. Makerspaces proved to be generative learning environments for skills, new modes of inclusion, and opportunities for school innovation.
The experiences gathered and the pilot project aim to initiate a process of rethinking and reflection on current educational practices, which still appear too often anchored to traditional schemes that no longer conform to today’s society, characterized by rapid change and complexity. The aim is undoubtedly to highlight the lights and shadows, potential and challenges of an innovative and “transformative” approach to traditional didactics, marking a step forward in educational research while identifying future directions to pursue and investigate
Maker Education and semplexity. Rethinking education to address emerging complexity
No full textToday’s educational systems deal with several elements of complexity resulting from the rapid transformations of contemporary society. Employability and professional skills have evolved considerably since the beginning of the 21st century, with an emphasis on creativity, design, and engineering processes. Teachers are therefore required to redesign teaching and learning pathways, emphasizing flexible and microlearning-oriented design and competence-based didactics that effectively integrates technology. This paper aims to reflect on the contribution of Maker Education within the emerging complexity, analyzing an experience conducted in light of three fundamental principles of Berthoz’s theory of semplexity: modularity, redundancy, and deviation. The experience provided teachers with the opportunity to revise their own practices and posture towards new technologies. At the same time, the experience allowed us to impact on the students’ life skills by soliciting the three competence areas outlined in the 2020 LifeComp Framework
Learning in the post-digital era. Transforming education through the Maker approach
No full textIn today’s world, technology and digital media are no longer separate, “other” than “natural” human and social life. Technology has become pervasive, transparent, reaching a “stable” form, no longer revolutionary. A new concept, “the post-digital,” is emerging and gradually taking hold in a wide range of fields. The resulting complexities call for over-coming the binary and hierarchical approach between theory and practice by rethinking traditional teaching patterns and remediating knowledge. Maker Education is moving in this direction. It is considered a technology-based extension of activism, developing STEAM and 21st-century skills. Its main exponents believe that it can “disrupt” or transform traditional educational methods. The Maker Movement, indeed, overlaps with the natural inclinations of children and the power of learning by doing. This contribution presents an ongoing research project that aims to outline a propos-al for integrating this approach into the primary and lower secondary school curriculum. We detected its impact on students’ school self-efficacy and attitude toward STEM and 21st-century skills. The results collected in the first part of the project look promising. The data underline the pupils’ interest in STEM subjects and the improvement of their organizational and interpersonal skills
LEARNING THROUGH PRACTICE: INTEGRATING THE MAKER APPROACH INTO PRIMARY SCHOOL CURRICULUM
No full textThe Maker culture is becoming increasingly influential in educational contexts worldwide. Maker education would be able to “disrupt” and increase traditional ways of learning (Dougherty, 2016; Martinez & Stager, 2013) interacting with the current digitally enhanced context.
Learning, in order to be meaningful, requires authentic and situated problems, based on processes of peer design, production, and discussion, and able to bridge the gap between real life and school (Dewey, 2004). The Maker approach meets the current demand for innovative thinkers and creators, as well as for a new way of teaching and learning future focused, project based and learner centred, where technology and handcraft combine to make students’ ideas, interests, and passions tangible. Spreading makerspaces and making in schools, especially for k-12, is currently a global educational goal (Crichton & Childs, 2016). But it represents at the same time a challenge, requiring a more defined process of implementation and design than informal makerspaces (Vongkulluksn et al., 2018). For this reason, making experiences are still scarcely widespread in schools and mainly introduced through extracurricular and short-term activities.
This contribution presents an ongoing project aimed at integrating the Maker education into primary school curriculum, following a longitudinal, interdisciplinary, and collaboratively approach. In particular, we want to detect the impact of this integration on pupils' self-efficacy, attitude towards STEM, and 21st century skills and to define possible assessment methods.
The project takes place at the Comprehensive Institute of Caldarola (MC), in Marche region, Italy. It involves a fifth-grade class, a fourth-grade class and a multi-grade class with fourth and fifth graders, for a total of 50 pupils. It started in January 2021 and is designed to last about a year, accompanying students until the next school year, which for some will mark the transition to lower secondary school.
We chose, as an integrating background, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), outlined by the UN (2015) in the 2030 Agenda. Specifically, we decided to select 8 goals and dedicate at least one month to each of them. For every goal, activities are designed to be carried out mainly in pairs or groups of three and to introduce new ways and tools of learning, while making connections to various disciplinary content.
The project started with a preliminary phase of discussion with teachers to align the project proposal to the levels and peculiarities of the classroom contexts. This was then followed by a phase of presentation and familiarization with some tools. Pupils were introduced to Educational Robotics using Lego We-Do 2.0 kits, and to 3D printing using 3D pens, experimenting with TinkerCAD, and watching a 3D printer in action.
The evolution of the examined variables is investigated qualitatively and quantitatively. Qualitative analysis is conducted through observation, students’ “logbooks”, and interviews with teachers. Quantitative analysis is instead based on the administration of two validated questionnaires.
The design process aims to progressively grant more and more autonomy to students, in order to bring out their interests and creativity and encourage trial-and-error strategy and remodelling
Rethinking assessment practices in schools. A research-training pathway to foster assessment as learning
No full textThe current socio-cultural context calls for a rethinking of teaching and assessment practices to turn assessment into a continuous and pervasive process that takes into account not only the final outcome but also the processes and reflections that led the student to achieve that result, with a view to continuous improvement. The main shift from the past is achieved with the adoption of the ‘assessment as learning’ paradigm, in which the student becomes an active player in the assessment and meta-reflection processes. Assessment is no longer perceived as a mere bureaucratic fulfillment of the teacher, but as a shared tool between students and teachers to build the learning path together, co-define goals, and make explicit expectations and critical issues. The design of authentic, open-ended, challenging tasks and the co-design and sharing of assessment rubrics, useful not only to ensure objectivity but also to guide the student in carrying out the task and implementing self-assessment, gains centrality. This paper describes a research-training pathway on assessment, conducted in 2022 and aimed at primary and secondary school teachers in the Marche Region, in Italy. The experience allowed teachers to approach the assessment as learning processes and to practice them in their own classrooms. The analysis of the data, collected through quantitative and qualitative tools and related to lower secondary school teachers, shows an increased focus on student activation in assessment dynamics and an increased awareness of the relevance of self-assessment processes. We also gained valuable feedback useful in guiding future research perspectives to improve the proposal’s sustainability
THE IMPACT OF A TEACHER TRAINING ONLINE COURSE ON EDUCATIONAL ROBOTICS
No full textThis paper reports on the results of a teacher training course on Coding and Educational Robotics and of a follow-up after one year. The course was carried out by researchers from University of Macerata and involved 41 teachers from the institute “Egisto Paladini” of Treia (Macerata, Italy), ranging from Kindergarten to Lower Secondary school.
Due to the pandemic situation, the course was held entirely online from May to June 2020, using different platforms to support both synchronous and asynchronous interactions. The reference platform for asynchronous interactions was Google Classroom, where materials, tasks, and feedback were shared. Google Meet was used instead for all the synchronous meetings. Therefore, even if some teachers had been previously trained in these fields, the peculiar situation in which the course was run made them work in a different way, acting both as researchers and as teachers in training.
The course was mainly divided into two phases: a first technical and theoretical phase for the presentation of topics and devices (specific videos and tasks for each stage of education) and a second design phase dedicated to the planning of collaborative activities on coding and/or robotics. All materials were shared with all the participants and all the meetings were also open to all of them. Thus, every teacher, regardless of the stage (Kindergarten - Primary - Secondary school) was free to choose which materials to view, which tasks to complete, and which meetings to attend. We wanted to promote an interdisciplinary and vertical curriculum, and a pull approach (Hagel, Brown, & Davison, 2012).
We administered two questionnaires (before and post course) to investigate basic knowledge - both on coding devices and project design -, expectations and satisfaction with the course, different attitudes in approaching design tasks, and new school activities.
After almost one year, we decided to perform a follow-up with a focus group of teachers who carried out some activities on these topics in their classrooms.
Initial analysis shows that the course was a stimulus for new insights for the upcoming school year. Indeed, it encouraged teachers to deepen what they had learned and gave them the confidence to experiment in their classrooms
Educational Robotics for Inclusive Design
No full textThis research stems from the need to prepare future teachers to design digital inclusive teaching. The contribution thus presents a distance training course on Coding and Educational Robotics (ER) for pre-service support teachers (PSSTs). The aim was not only to enhance PSSTs’ digital skills but mainly to foster their ability to design for all, using technologies in an inclusive perspective. Trainers supported them without offering predefined work packages. They stimulated PPSTs to become experimenters and researchers to identify functional paths for the introduction of coding-ER in their future curricular teaching. We investigated the evolution of PSSTs’ basic knowledge and self-confidence on coding-ER tools and methodologies and their beliefs on their introduction to PSSTs’ education. We finally detected their satisfaction with this training course. From the results, the training proved to be effective, despite the distance implementation and the lack of an embodied approach. The PSSTs showed a greater self-confidence and a higher awareness about the benefits of ER. They also demonstrated a conscious use of tools and a focus on inclusiveness in the design of learning paths. We can identify the following as success factors: the strong interaction between participants supported by the course structure; the continuous feedback from both peers and trainers; the possibility to experiment in groups and share successes and failures. These positive results have also led to a greater awareness of the role of support teachers in the complexity of classroom life
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