The aim of this paper is to evaluate the usefulness of educational software among teachers in Italy (N = 559). The evaluation of usefulness was conducted on the latest and most popular web-based software used by European teachers, namely: Quizizz, Mentimeter, Wakelet, Padlet, Canva, Emaze, Answergarden, Jamboard, Coggle, Createley, Wordwall,…

The spread of COVID-19 pandemic upturned higher education routines, inducing a shift to online learning which sometimes translated into a huge leap towards didactic experimentation. While exposing critical issues in existing teaching methodologies and assessment processes, such emergency distance education condition could spark meaningful…

The transition to distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic uncovered criticalities in the participation of students with special educational needs. The BESt-DaD project responded to these difficulties by developing a user-friendly online platform aimed at accommodating these students' neurocognitive profiles, ultimately promoting inclusion.…

Following China, the next severely affected country due to the COVID-19 epidemic was Italy. In consideration of the increasing number of infections, the government via the Ministerial Decree (DPCM) of March 2020 established various restrictive measures for the entire Italian territory, even involving the closure of schools. Hence, for the first…

Different approaches exist in delivering courses. The traditional face-to-face, the blended approach that combines the strengths of face-to-face with the application of technologies, and the online approach, which is the form of learning that takes place over the Internet. This article reports on the impact of the forced transformation of a data…

Soft skills are interpersonal, communication, and personal attributes that enable individuals to interact effectively with others in personal and workplace settings. Despite the significance of soft skills for career success, these skills are not necessarily taught in traditional academic settings. Consequently, education institutions must adopt…

The amount of news on the web often confuses the ideas of the reader, who struggles to disentangle information that is sometimes contradictory and difficult to decipher. In the face of such an articulated scenario, the role played by schools is absolutely central: the development of critical thinking in young people (and by extension in their…

In this note, we analyse the use of gestures and gazes by a group of university lecturers while distance teaching. We investigated the video lessons produced and recorded by 22 lecturers, with the purpose of spotting the presence of signalling behaviours such as glances aimed at drawing the attention to parts of the screen, or pointing gestures,…

Holocaust education, which refers to the teaching and learning of the Holocaust--the systematic genocide of six million Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II--is an essential component of history and social studies education in many countries. Its primary aim is to raise awareness of the Holocaust, promote understanding of…

In this work, we explore the use of digital technologies and statistical analysis to monitor how Italian secondary school students' writing changes over time and how comparisons can be made across different high school types. We analyzed more than 2,000 exam essays written by Italian high school students over 13 years and in five different school…

The role of virtual simulations in the evolution of primary school students' mental models about electrostatics is investigated by analysing the answers of two groups of 9-10 years old pupils inside instructional sequences that combine two hands-on activities using balloons and jackets with the same activities using PhET simulations: one group…

Meaning-making in teaching-learning mathematical processes is a relevant issue analysed through different philosophical and educational frames. In particular, the use of digital tools in mathematics education affects the meaning-making processes. This paper discusses meaning-making from a phenomenological standpoint, in which interpretative…

This report describes how entrepreneurship competence is embedded in vocational education and training (VET) in Italy. It complements existing knowledge with examples of methods, tools and approaches that can help policy-makers, VET providers and other stakeholders build better entrepreneurial learning ecosystems. The report is based on the pilot…

Ensuring equity in education is a goal for sustainable development. Among the factors that hinder equity, socioeconomic status (SES) has the highest impact on learning Mathematics. This paper addresses the issue of equity at the secondary school level by proposing an approach based on adopting automatic formative assessment (AFA). Carefully…

This paper deals with the pros and cons in relation to the teaching strategy imposed specifically in Italy by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has involved and continues to involve significant changes in the setting in which students and teachers interact. The approach is multidisciplinary, in that the perspective advanced is both historical and…