Showing papers in "Italian Journal of Sociology of Education in 2016"

Character Education: Themes and Researches. An Academic Literature Review

Abstract: Character education is both a rooted and developing discipline. Even though there is no consensual definition, it can be widely described as a school- based process to promote personal development in youth, through the development of virtue, moral values, and moral agency. Starting from the growing interest about this theme in recent years, this article aims at using the "character education" analysis category to conduct an exploratory research on the main tendencies in the international literature, defining which are the main topics, exploring the way these topics develop in terms of theory and empirical research and analyzing how they relate to each other. In view of this goal, titles and abstracts of 261 articles published in 145 peer-reviewed academic journals over the period 2005-2014 were selected from Education Source, ERIC, Psychology & Behavioral Sciences Collection and SocINDEX databases. Articles' titles and abstract were analyzed through the T-Lab software, using different content analysis techniques. Although many ambivalences and ambiguities affect the meaning attributed to the character education, some key trends emerge from this literature review and the considered studies seem to agree that character education can play an important role in the construction of children and adolescents' identity and can be a distinctive intervention for youth education and socialization.

Exploring the Impact of ICTs in Education: Controversies and Challenges

Abstract: Educational innovation is considered as a top priority all over the world, and the potential of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to foster it increasingly is recognized (European Commission, 2015; Eurydice, 2011; OECD, 2010). In formal education settings, however, ICT adoption often is regarded as a highly demanding challenge that usually meets resistance by schools. Although it is largely believed that decades of large investments in ICTs and the increasing digitalization of teaching and learning processes can benefit the education system at different levels, data to support the perceived benefits are limited and evidence of effective impact is elusive or even debatable (Bocconi et al., 2013; UNESCO, 2009). This essay offers a conceptual framework providing multiple angles for the assessment of ICT impact on education. It presents the various aspects to take into account and questions what is to be assessed, the appropriate methodologies to be implemented, and the most suitable indicators. Such issues are discussed in light of an Italian case study showing the complexity of ICT innovations in schooling and dealing with methodological aspects connected to the definition of a set of indicators addressed to explore technology-based school innovations.

On Character Education: Self-Formation and Forms of Life in a Morphogenic Society

Abstract: The essay discusses the concept of character, and some related notions, as they emerge in the contemporary discourse on education. The aim of this article is to provide a sociological interpretation of the increasing relevance of such notions within education policy agendas at the global level. More precisely, the focus is on what could be described as an intensification of reflexivity upon the human being, and a growing interest in the ‘whole child’ in educational agendas, i.e. in personal development beyond the learning outcomes regarding academic topics. The argument develops three main points. First, the principal structural and cultural conditionings are examined that play a role in fostering the renewed importance of personhood. Furthermore, different conceptual frameworks are examined that result in different psycho-semantics. The essay shows how such concepts as character and social and emotional skills (SES) epitomize different, comprehensive conceptions of human selfhood. The article examines their divergence and convergence alike. Finally, some possibilities of integration between the approaches of character and SES are briefly sketched.

Digital Skills and the Influence of Students’ Socio-Economic Background. An Exploratory Study in German Elementary Schools

Abstract: This article examines the implementation of ICT in German elementary schools, as Germany appears to be behind from an international perspective. The main foci are how teachers align their instruction with students’ prior digital knowledge, and how students’ socio-economic backgrounds influence their motivation to work with ICT and their level of digital competence. This qualitative study is based on semi-standardized expert-interviews with 15 teachers, principals, experts and representatives of educational policy and administration in Germany. The interviews were analyzed using qualitative content analysis supported by MAXQDA. The results indicate that teachers design ICT-based instruction that is aligned with students’ informal knowledge of digital media, interests, class and ethnic background as well as with school-specific curricula. Students’ socioeconomic backgrounds influence their access to ICT devices and social media at home as well as their motivation to engage in ICT-based learning opportunities in schools. Gaining digital competencies, however, is greatly influenced by other competencies and learning strategies, in particular literacy. The results indicate that while low achieving students seem to benefit from digital learning programmes that can be adapted to their individual prior knowledge, in many ICT-based learning environments they need extra support and guidance. Furthermore, teachers need support for employing ICT in their classrooms and to meet the needs of their students’ heterogeneous prior digital knowledge.

An Ambiguous Health Education: The Quantified Self and the Medicalization of the Mental Sphere

Abstract: It is hard to deny that contemporary society is becoming increasingly medicalized. Mental health is likely the most medicalized sphere. The pathologization of emotions is entangled with the rise of a therapeutic culture. This article proposes the hypothesis that apps used to self-track different aspects of mental health and wellbeing represent a peculiar kind of pedagogical tool and a new engine of medicalization. The “quantified self” acts on reality with the conviction that a data-driven life can enhance one’s health status. The mechanisms that foster this attitude are gamification and quantification – two central features of mental health apps. We seek to demonstrate this through a content analysis of six of the most downloaded mental health apps focused on two different kinds of texts: the description provided by the app itself and the reviews written by its users. Our investigation reveals that these types of apps are giving rise to an idea of the subject which is separated from social factors. This de-policitization of health brought about by the apps strengthens the neoliberal idea of health as an individual responsibility, marginalizing any discourse on social justice. Therefore, this kind of health education appears at best ambiguous, if not controversial.

The Technological Turn: Policies of Innovation, Politics and Mobilisation

Abstract: Societal and political transformations perpetually cause tension in educational systems, this is the locus of a seemingly endless struggle. The debate repeatedly merges philosophical, epistemological and pedagogical issues but it has an essential political nature. The crisis of School is not about its decline; on the contrary, it is seen a “crisis of growth”, a malaise attributable to its inexorable expansion. Seen thus, today’s paradigm of life-long learning and life-long guidance requires more school, not less. Bernstein defines this evolution as the pedagogisation of everyday life. The upheaval caused by the technological revolution has precipitated this crisis. Traditional pedagogies are depicted as inadequate to deal with and adapt to present conditions of work and leisure, where ICTs are widespread. In this framework, technological education has become a powerful social device. In a political dimension, the objective is to co-opt teachers and schools into a political project of transformation of society. Moreover, the notion of “mobilisation” may help to focus more clearly on the on-going state of emergency that characterizes the prevailing attitude to the educational system. In fact, innovation and reforms demand constant commitment by social actors both in strategies of adhesion and resistance.

E-learning in an Undergraduate Course in Research Methods for the Social Sciences: Reflections on Teaching

Abstract: Starting with an overview of the opportunities provided by e-learning in the educational environment, this paper discusses a blended course in social science methodology offered to around 160 students taking the undergraduate Sociology degree at the University of Salerno (Italy). In particular, it provides a reflection on ten challenges of the discipline (e.g. relationship theory and practice, quantitative vs qualitative methods) which emerged during our teaching experience and discusses how they might be addressed by adopting e-learning. To evaluate the impact of the blended course upon the experience of learner, a web survey involving 114 students is carried out. Principally, the survey focuses on the study method and the relationship between information and communication technologies (ICT) and learning. The process that we followed (reflection on the characteristics of the discipline and the needs of students, implementation of the blended course, evaluation) aims to design a valuable teaching path requiring a renewed commitment on the part of university lecturers. In this paper we argue that a blended course improved the educational process in terms of knowledge construction and reflexivity.

Assessment of Learning to Learn in Early Childhood: An Italian Framework

Abstract: Internationally, the importance of non-cognitive competencies determining success in life is widely recognized (Blair, 2002; Heckman, 2008; OECD ESP, 2015). Among long-term outcomes correlated with such competencies, researchers include the capacity of individuals to participate in society and in the labor market; lower crime rates and involvement in healthimpairing activities (Heckman, 2008). Learning to learn could play a connecting role between cognitive and non-cognitive competencies (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). Listed among the eight European key competencies (EU Communities, 2006), this is a complex concept which has recently re-attracted the interest of researchers worldwide (Deakin Crick et al., 2014; Stipek, 2012). This paper analyses the notion of learning to learn (Stringher, 2014) for the development of an assessment battery providing teachers with essential information on the current state of learning competence in preschool children. This assessment serves formative purposes and represents a basis for interventions geared at children’s optimal development, in coherence with national curricular guidelines (MIUR, 2012) and with the recent European Quality Framework for ECEC (EU Commission, 2014). The paper addresses the theoretical basis of tool development, areas of assessment and relevant rationale behind these choices. A roadmap for the empirical phase of the validation study is also sketched.

The Relationship between Financial Education and Society: A Sociological Perspective

Abstract: In the last five years, after the financial downturn that hit most Western economies, there has been a flourishing of financial and economic education projects in Italy, aimed mainly at increasing financial literacy and awareness of different targets, from primary school students to the elders. The paper’s purpose is to classify a sample of 120 projects targeted at students – collected through a 3years web-monitoring research according to the functions that these project give to financial education and the representation of the relationship between financial education and society which is underlining them. Moving from classical theories of sociology of education, we describe three interpretative perspectives: functionalist; conflictualist and interactionist perspective. Each of these representations carry value-implications and limits that need to be accounted before projecting new activities in the field.

Education and Citizenship between Decline of Charisma and Need of Educational Anchoring

Abstract: This essay first discusses the meaning character education can still have in a late modern society, given the current crisis of definite educational purposes, particularly of the moral dimension of education. The author goes on to explain how such a loss of meaning could be traced back to some sort of ‘loss of charisma’ within the educational domain – a hard social fact that has to do both with norms and values and with teachers’ authority and role. Finally, the essay argues for the need of ‘anchorage’ by young people, and articulates the way such a need becomes manifest in the process of identity building, particularly in the public sphere.

Media(ting) Between Generations: Common Sense and Perceptions of New Media by Young People and Teachers

Abstract: The wide spread of mobile communication devices, the expansion of social media and participatory media platforms, the ease to edit, share and produce media content, indicate a trend of change in the media system that influences the production and consumption of knowledge and generates new paths for the young’s identity construction. This raises necessary questions about the ways not only young, but also the education agencies – school in particular – relate to these transformations, starting from taking into account the production of common sense on the use, risks and opportunities of the media. Based on these considerations, in this paper, we will discuss the results of a qualitative case study carried out in the Veneto Region (Italy) on upper secondary school students and teachers in order to detect and compare the perception that young and educators have of the media, trying to identify boundaries or land on which to build exchange opportunities for dialogue between the generations.

The Family as a Source of Relational Goods (and Evils) for Itself and for the Community

Abstract: 1. What qualifies a family as a common good? The worldwide debate about ‘what is’ and ‘what makes the family’, and what are its outcomes in terms of common goods (or evils), needs a clarification. In this contribution, I wish to claim that only a relational perspective can deal with these issues properly. The common good is not a good of an aggregative type which consists of the sum of the well-being of the individuals belonging to a group or collectivity, but is instead a good of relational type, which consists in sharing the relationships from which derive individual and common goods. We need to draw a distinction between purely aggregative and relationally generative types of family forms. Of course, both of them can produce individual and common evils. It happens when they fail to adopt a relational steering which transforms the bad into the good relationships. In terms of social policies, the best welfare practices are those that resort to methodologies of networking which aim to promote the family through interactive relational networks which stimulate the development of the natural potentials of the families themselves. My argument is that the family is a common good in a very different sense in regards to that which circulates in the mass media. The common good is not a good of an aggregative type which, as a general concept, consists of the sum of the well-being of the individuals belonging to a group or collectivity, but is instead a good of relational type, which consists in sharing the relationships from which derive both individual and community goods. I will draw a distinction between aggregative and generative couples.

Educating Citizens: Who Is Doing That in the United States?

Abstract: The creation of systems of public schooling in Western Europe and North America over the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was primarily intended to develop the civic virtues, including national loyalty, considered essential to the nationbuilding process. This project was often carried out in explicit opposition to schooling with a religious character that was provided independent of government sponsorship. In recent decades, however, public schools have for a variety of reasons largely abandoned the mission of moral and civic education and, ironically, it is now faithbased schools that are most consistently seeking to shape loyal and engaged citizens. After a brief survey of research on Catholic and Evangelical schools, the article provides some preliminary findings from a study of Islamic secondary schools in the United States.

Action Research Design for an International Boundary Crossing Study to improve student and teacher participation in school processes and practices to improve learning and learning outcomes.

Abstract: This special section of the Italian Journal of Sociology of Education focuses on the dissemination of the first stage of an international pilot action research project. The research focuses on improving teacher and student participation in institutional processes and practices to improve learning and learning outcomes. The research team includes professional researchers from Higher Education Institutions working in partnership with secondary schools. The pilot is to test the quality dimensions of the research design to inform a larger research project for which the team is seeking funding. This paper focuses on the research design, shared aims, and methodologies that were developed and applied by the research team for all the cases in this journal including: England, India, Israel, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland and Russia. The paper also reveals some tentative findings. Overall, the findings that are important for education leaders and managers reveal committed pedagogical relationships require participation and commitment of all agents in the rehearsal of power sharing and the politics of democracy. However, within an agenda of performativity and standardised curriculums there is little time for developing pedagogical relationships. The evidence also reveals that the characteristics that participants most valued regarding their relationships within their community and of their institutions included trust, respecting the self and the other, agreeing to disagree or resolving conflict peacefully, and recognising diversity through inclusive practices.

The Work Culture of the Social Planners in Apulia. A Contentious Balance between Education, Professional Skills and Labour Market

Abstract: This essay illustrates the role of social planners in the field of professionals of the knowledge economy, drawing from the results of a research carried out in Puglia from 2013 onwards. The social planners are professionals who plan and manage the local policies that are capable of transforming their own territories. They play a complex work that exemplifies the post-Fordist change of advanced societies. This paper demonstrates the difficulty of positioning planning work within the traditional occupational sector and develops a critical look on the empirical evidence that emerged from the research, with special attention to education, training, professional skills and work culture. Planning activities appear suspended between an ethos directed to personal fulfillment and socio-economic conditions that hinder the pursuit of this very goal. The professional skills of social planners seem to express a world view and a cognitive approach that is in harmony with predominantly social science based training but in contradiction with the structural features of the economy and society of southern Italy.

Between Work Flexibility and Higher Education: the Digital Workers in Southern Italy

Abstract: The article presents an analysis of digital workers with degrees in Humanities: political, social, and communication sciences. In the context of the Mezzogiorno of Italy, characterized by a depressed economy, a qualitative study is used to analyze the new works of the knowledge society. The paper explores the important flexibilization process of subjects with high human capital and underemployment. After having discussed the labour market context and, in particular, the types of demand for work in the South of Italy, the Author analyzes the consequences on identities, the meaning of worker’s lives and the effects on the reduction of relationships. The results are based on thirty qualitative interviews of digital workers. The paper argues that precariousness does not reduce the expectations of the workers and their professional ability, but has an impact resulting in a decreased material standard of living.

An Archaeological Analysis of the Last Italian Education Reform Policy

Abstract: In a Foucauldian perspective, our work consists of an archaeological analysis of the last education reform policy of the Italian Government: the socalled “La Buona Scuola” reform. We assume that policies are discourses which exercise power through a production of truth and knowledge. We try to build up an “archaeological tool” for the analysis of policy texts, in order to light up the regimes of visibility and enunciability through which new truths are produced. Then, we use it to analyze the “La Buona Scuola” policy. Deconstructing its texts, we see how they try to produce relevant changes in the truths of the Italian education system. First of all, we will discover the marketization of the italian politics, through the merging of administrative and commercial aspects in the authoral function. Secondly, we will find the manufacturing of a new teacher’s subjectivity, market-oriented and commodfied. Thirdly, we will see the slipping of purposes of the whole system by the re-interpretation of the relations among the education, the right to labour and the citizenship. At the end of the analysis, we will determine the formation of new discursive strategies and light up the fields of possible options that the policy realizes.

Education 2.0 and gender: a case study on the use of interactive whiteboards in secondary schools

Abstract: The digitalization of education systems is presented as a possible way to match the concerns of a knowledge based economy with those of an inclusive information society. To meet this double challenge, education systems are asked to shift from a ‘traditional school’ to an ‘Education 2.0’ model, introducing innovative pedagogies through the use of ICT devices characterized by interactivity and multimediality. The article investigates over the presence and breadth of this shift within secondary schools of the region Sardinia, Italy, since the introduction of Interactive Whiteboards (IWB), to focus next on the gender dimension of change. Empirical evidence drawn from an evaluative research adopting a mixed method approach is presented and analysed: first, an idealtype of classroom organization after IWB introduction is offered, then the main gender dynamics emerging in reorganized classrooms are considered, focussing on interaction among its main actors’, namely teachers and students. Conclusions suggest that, although a less gendered approach to technology is observed in classroom practices enhanced by Education 2.0 models, these changes haven’t (yet) led to a reconfiguration of the symbolic representations and tacit assumptions structuring school settings, still hampering fairer educational and professional trajectories for women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths).

Call Centre Operators and Knowledge Economy. An Empirical Study of Career Paths in Two Companies in South Italy

Abstract: The aim of this essay is to explore how the transition to knowledge economy and to a cognitive capitalist regime has pushed further the issues related to professional and existential uncertainty and has given rise to modern forms of insecurity and alienation. The connection between education and social condition appears to be, in contrast with the EU proclaims, looser than ever and the investment in skills appears often to be, for “weak” graduates, a professional and economic failure. In such a scenario, call centres embody the most widespread example of a cognitive capitalist company within a post-Fordist regime. They also represent the most common landing place for weak graduates. Through this survey we intend to put in evidence how economic contingency may lead weak graduates to fragmented professional paths, job dissatisfaction and modern forms of alienation that separate the worker not only from the product of his own work, but also from its cognitive and affective characteristics, and from his future perspectives.

Measuring Digital Teaching Innovation Using Item Response Theory Models

Abstract: In the last few years, two central questions have emerged in expert and academic debate on innovation policies in education. The first is the measurement of the effectiveness of innovation policies, the second regards the measurement itself and its methodological improvements. The problem of measurement is not only a methodological and technical issue; it is also a theoretical one. Every technical choice is made on the basis of a theoretical frame, so will have broad theoretical consequences. This article aims to focus on the problem of the definition and measurement of innovation in teaching activities. Its goal is mainly the application of the IRT methodology as a tool to assess propensity or attitudes in different domains pertaining to the use of ICT in schools. Our starting point is the hypothesis that the “propensity of innovation” may be defined as a latent variable defined by different dimensions. This paper considers the main results of a research project on digital teaching innovation carried out in 2013-2014. Digital teaching innovation was investigated through a sample survey addressed to teachers. An ad hoc questionnaire was used and Item Response Theory models were applied to analyse responses provided by teachers: propensity to digital teaching innovation was assessed with five indexes together with a further five related to other specific topics (e.g. the perception of the school climate, the school context). Finally, each indicator was related to potential explanatory variables in order to evaluate relationships between the salient characteristics of teachers and schools and the main dimensions of analysis.

Digital Competencies and Capabilities. Pre-adolescents Inside and Outside School

Abstract: The investment on key-competences in last years was one crucial European strategy to face the new challenges of the knowledge society and of the digital convergence and to guarantee the active citizenship and social inclusion. The first answer has been given in Lisbon 2000’s, when eight main objectives have been presented; they were focused on the improvement of skills in educational paths of the main agencies (i.e. school and family). Hence, the digital competence, included in Lisbon strategies, can be interpreted in a double meaning: as basic skill (focused on the digital literacy) as soft skill (focused on the digital learning). Starting from here, this proposal will construct a theoretical description of the digital competency and its impact to socialization processes of pre-adolescents, considering the influence and the strategies applied by agencies of the social capital. This issue will be analysed through the re-reading the capabilities approach by Sen and Nussbaum (2011), according two perspectives: 1. the first is connected to the development of digital competencies during the learning process of preadolescents; 2. the second is focused on the relational and communicative styles of their socializing agencies, that influence the relationship of children with media, with social and cognitive consequences.

Socialization of the “Homeless Mind”. An Analysis of Contemporary Society through the Contribution of Peter Berger

Abstract: Make a contribution to the socialization process debate, using Peter Berger’s sociological perspective, is the goal of this paper. The making of consciousness after the modernization process – the era of the “homeless mind” (Berger, Berger, & Kellner, 1974) – is a very complex phenomenon to explain and it is a very relevant subject for sociology. Berger proposes a very innovative theoretical systematization in which is main the concept of meaning. The book that made him famous is the one written with Thomas Luckmann in 1966: “The Social Construction of Reality. A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge”. Their study seeks to highlight the knowledge of common sense and social processes through this knowledge is built. The process of social construction of reality – according to the authors –, has a dialectical nature, which is made of three different moments but separable only analytically. These three moments are defined “externalization, objectivation and internalization” (Berger & Luckmann, 1991, p. 149). Of great importance to the stage of the internalization is the socialization process. So “the imposition of social patterns on behaviour” (Berger & Berger, 1975, p. 55) becomes a very remarkable phenomenon to be studied, especially in the contemporary society scenario where the traditional hierarchy of values has lost its stability.

Precarious Researchers. An Exploratory Study in the Universities of Central and South Italy

Abstract: From January 2000 the European Commission launched the idea of a “European space” of research in order to coordinate activities, programs and national and regional research policies. Italy seems to be an exception: recurrent cuts to higher education and increase in precariousness threaten the core of scientific research, beruf and professional ethos of the (young) knowledgeworkers. The survey presented in the paper offers an overview of the situation of many precarious researchers working in the universities of south Italy. The personal aspects of their academic experience – such as the relation with colleagues and superiors, the necessity to work without an income and accomplishing non pertinent tasks, the gradual dismissal from university – are further analysed through in-depth interviews carried out with a sample of precarious researchers working in the University of Salento.