Montessori is a highly individualized pedagogy that prioritizes following each child's individual interests over standardized test scores. This quasi-experimental study compares groups of Montessori students (treatment groups, N = 535-710) with control groups of non-Montessori students, matched through the simple matching method, which controls…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a tactical games model instructional plan on game-play volleyball performances of elementary school students, taking into account their skill level. In total, 39 fourth-grade students (average age: 8.9 years) participated in a 13-week unit, in which each lesson exaggerated the use of…

Literature has already shown that gestures play a relevant role in classroom interactions between students and teacher. We integrate the perspective of Theory of Semiotic Mediation with the notion of Semiotic Bundle to illustrate how gestures can be used as "pivot signs" in semiotic chains. This means that gestures can be performed by…

The present study investigates whether exposure to multilingual pedagogies enhances emergent bilingual children's narrative abilities. These abilities are among the most reliable indicators of children's literacy skills. We compare two groups of emergent bilingual children with migrant background attending the fourth and fifth grade of a public…

Literature highlights how education in the twenty-first century begins to advocate multiple new concepts, such as new technology, new pedagogies, interdisciplinary curricula, open learning, etc. Among these concepts, the recognition and awareness about one's character strengths are demonstrated to improve emotional management and…

This work refers to a research project named 'Math walks', whose aim is to investigate a few students' common conceptions and difficulties related to symmetries as well as to guide the student in the transition from visualization to conceptualization. As far as this issue is concerned, we designed a learning activity (LA) according to Dina van…

In this article, we describe the results of a research study investigating the effects of a programming model specifically designed to apply the pedagogy of gifted education to the overall process of schoolwide enrichment, "The Schoolwide Enrichment Model" ("SEM," Renzulli & Reis, 2014). The specific factors examined during…

According to a language-integrated view of spelling development, learning to spell involves the same language-learning skills across alphabetic systems. A prediction based on this view is that the same spelling training should be equally effective for learning to spell in a shallow (Italian, native language) or an opaque (English, additional…

The technologies and online supports that can offer students study opportunities have increased a lot in recent years, but often students do not use computers or mobile devices in school and, in general, for educational purposes. The Action of the University of Turin, within the "Ragazzi Connessi" project, proposes strategies for school…

Although metaphors are essential tools in everyday communication and educational settings, the literature lacks evidence of effective training tools to promote metaphor comprehension in typical development. Grounding in theoretical pragmatics, we developed a novel metaphor comprehension training (MetaCom) for school-age children that focuses on…

Computational Thinking (CT) has been recognized as one of the fundamental skills that all graduates should acquire. For this reason, motivational concerns need to be addressed at an early age of a child, and reaching students who do not consider themselves candidates for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines is important as…

This study analyzed the potential transfer effects on reading comprehension skills of two different training programs administered to 9- to 10-year-old children attending fourth grade classes. One training program was based on a working memory updating paradigm (i.e., words, digits, sentence and text updating working memory tasks). The other…

As indicated in numerous research studies, schoolchildren encounter many difficulties and obstacles in learning the multifaceted concept of the angle. In order to explore the possibility of enhancing schoolchildren's understanding of such a concept, the authors present a study that aims at investigating some structural characteristics of…

The current study was primarily aimed at verifying the effect of a combined computer-assisted and pencil-and-paper training that was developed to empower visuo-spatial abilities in primary school pupils. One hundred and twenty third grade (mean average: eight years old) and fourth grade (mean age: nine years old) students attending several Italian…

With the rise of the internet and new communication technologies, language learning has moved beyond the classroom walls. This volume presents a range of important studies on innovative ways for learning languages outside the classroom. Chapters discuss MOOCs in the UK, Belgium, China, and Italy for studying a range of languages, research on new…