The European Union's policies on lifelong learning, initiated in the 1990s, have significantly influenced the development of Italy's legislative framework in this area. This paper presents the key findings from a series of collaborative research projects conducted between Roma Tre University and the National Forum of the Third Sector. Undertaken…

This multinational authored article presents the findings and recommendations of a three-year, European-funded project 'OpenMed: Opening up education in South Mediterranean countries', which brought together five higher education partners from Europe and nine from the South Mediterranean region. This was the first cross-European initiative to…

This paper proposes a reflection on the evolution of educational technologies and on its impact on school education. Over time, even though with different approaches, methods and tools, educational technology as a field of research has followed substantially two main directions. The first direction has resulted in studies on the new technical and…

The purpose of this Joint Research Centre and European Training Foundation (JRC-ETF) joint report is to propose a methodology for the scaling up of SELFIE on the basis of several case studies from EU Member States and South Eastern European countries. Designed to support schools in using digital technologies for teaching and learning effectively,…

The subject of computer science (CS) and computer science education (CSE) has relatively recently arisen as a subject for inclusion within the compulsory school curriculum. Up to this present time, a major focus of technologies in the school curriculum has in many countries been on applications of existing technologies into subject practice (both…

CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) was introduced in the Italian school system in 2003 through a Reform Law, which made it mandatory for upper secondary schools. This paper is aimed at describing the most important steps of this innovation, with the relevant implications for policymakers, teachers and students. Italy's CLIL mandate is…

In 2010, a comprehensive reform required Italian state universities to restructure their institutional governance by revising their statutes. This interpretative paper aims to evaluate whether the Italian reform is congruent with its declarations, examine the variations in the implementation within the same country of a unitary national regulation…

This article estimates the effect of an administrative change in a voucher policy implemented by an Italian Regional government. The voucher was initiated in 2000, and is intended to help families that want to enroll their children in private schools. In 2008, the policy was changed, making the administrative procedure required for obtaining the…

In recent years, the issue of early childhood staff professionalisation has been taking an increasingly prominent position in policy-making and academic debates at the international level. Despite this growing interest, studies investigating the content and delivery of professional preparation programmes for early childhood practitioners are still…

This article focuses on the interaction between the European dimension driven by the creation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and the development of national reforms to fulfil that objective. On the basis of data gathered in eight countries involved in EuroHESC project TRUE (Transforming European Universities), the curricular and the…

Since 1999, European education ministers have discussed and further implemented the "Bologna process", a wide-ranging framework for the reform of higher education. Lifelong learning was added as a goal of the process in 2001. This article evaluates the extent to which the development of lifelong learning has progressed and examines…

Evaluation and accountability are two of the most popular catchwords employed by higher education reformers in the Western world over the last 25 years. For 25 years governments throughout Western countries have been using evaluation and institutional accountability as policy tools to steer their university systems at a distance. From a…

The Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) will establish technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the survey design and implementation processes of PIAAC yield high-quality and internationally comparable data. This document provides a revised version of the technical standards and guidelines originally…

Educational policies and plans for Italy's entire education system are evaluated in this report. Part One contains "The Examiners' Report;" Part Two, the "Record of the Review Meeting;" and Part Three, a "Summary of the Background Report" (prepared by the Italian authorities). Some results of the evaluation include…

This report assesses the extent to which lifelong learning (LL) is being implemented in vocational education and training (VET) in Italy. Section 1 depicts the general situation regarding policies and innovations introduced at the statutory level to implement LL objectives. It introduces the principle of integration around which policy is…