Search

While the current debate highlights an increasing deficit of civic engagement, new - and often less visible - forms of “participation” are beginning to be detected, such as those implemented by citizens with migratory background living at the physical and symbolic margins of Western towns. Our study, part of the project “Abitare insieme” (Living together) in Milan’s multicultural suburbs, was developed with a dual purpose: to analyze the relationship between citizens with a migratory background, active citizenship, and their place representations/belongings; to experiment the co-construction of innovative spaces of speech for citizens, through their dialogical involvement in the research. In a framework of participatory research to enhance reflexivity and transformative practices, a survey was designed and administered. In this paper we will discuss the survey results, along with some methodological implication. The aim is to contribute to reinvent the “active citizenship” construct from a transformative, pedagogical, and intercultural perspective.

Review of: Greco, S. (2019). Diccit. Diccionario combinatorio español-italiano. Licosia: A-K. Ogliastro Cilento, pp. 373.

Many methods for measuring agreement among raters have been proposed and applied in many domains in the areas of education, psychology, sociology, and medical research. A brief overview of the most used measures of interrater absolute agreements for ordinal rating scales is provided, and a new index is proposed that has several advantages. In particular, the new index allows to evaluate the agreement between raters for each single case (subject or object), and to obtain also a global measure of the interrater agreement for the whole group of cases evaluated. The possibility of having evaluations of the agreement on the single case is particularly useful, for example, in situations where the rating scale is being tested, and it is necessary to identify any changes to it, or to request the raters for a specific comparison on the single case in which the disagreement occurred. The index is not affected by the possible concentration of ratings on a very small number of levels of the ordinal scale.

The Arthurian heroins associated with the severed head motif seem to evoke rather the figure of Salome, who succeeded in obtaining from Herod the head of Saint John the Baptist, than that of Judith. The figure of the damsel claiming the head of a knight seems to have more to do with Celtic origins than with biblical reminiscences. However, whether one examines Chrétien de Troyes’ Chevalier de la Charrette, the Perlesvaus, or the Lancelot-Graal cycle, not all the characters linked to this motif are judged negatively. This raises the question of the other biblical figure associated with beheading: Judith. The codex Cologny, Fondation Bodmer 147, a manuscript interpolating in the Lancelot-Graal cycle texts of various origins and natures (religious, moral, historical...) invites us to explore this assumption because it inserts, in the middle of the Merlin, a translation of the biblical book of Judith. What is therefore the possible influence of this character on the representations of feminine heroism in the 12th-13th centuries, in its confrontation with violence, but also as a model of virtue?

This study aims to explore further the applicability of the six-point rating scale elaborated by Kuiken and Vedder (2017) to assess functional adequacy. According to the authors, functional adequacy (FA) is a multidimensional construct combining successful task completion and the effective transmission of a message from a speaker or writer to a hearer or reader. Kuiken and Vedder’s scale has been mainly applied to written L2 output in previous research, whereas in this study it is tested on both L1 and L2 written texts, elicited by means of different tasks. The texts, produced by 20 non-native and 20 native speakers of Italian, were rated by seven non-expert raters, trained to use the scale. The results showed low levels of absolute inter-rater agreement and consistency, especially for L1 texts. On the other hand, our findings are more encouraging with regard to the reliability of the scale and its applicability across tasks. The results also revealed a strong correlation between FA scores and those obtained in a C-test used as an independent measure of general L2 proficiency.

Copyright of SCENARIO: Official Italian Journal of ANIARTI is the property of ANIARTI and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this study the effects of school and classroom climate and teacher’s behavior on Italian students’ mathematical achievement score in PISA 2012 were investigated. Simple and scale indices provided by the PISA database, constructed by responses from the students’ and principals’ background questionnaires, were considered as predictive variables of the math achievement scores. Multilevel models including all the predictive variables, controlling for some relevant student, family background and school variables, confirmed that perceptions of school and classroom climate and teachers’ behavior influence mathematics performance in PISA. In particular, the effect of the teacher’s use of cognitive activation strategies had the strongest positive effect, followed by the school and classroom climate indicators. Thus, more cognitively activating instruction and an orderly and peaceful atmosphere in schools and classrooms encourage students and help to transform existing interests into mathematic achievement. Our analyses show that these factors can also influence the gap between Northern and Southern Italian macro-areas. When the predictive variables are added to the control variables in our multilevel models including macro-area indicators, the gap between Northern macro-areas and the Southern-Islands decreases by over twenty per cent, and the gap between Northern macro-areas and the Southern by over fourteen per cent. On the basis of these results, we have provided some useful indications for Italian educators and policy makers.

At the infant-toddler center, the rituals of transition that mark children’s arrival and going home times offer interesting kaleidoscopes for the study of interactive dynamics with the associated meanings and implicit educational models. Numerous pedagogical studies have investigated the meanings of these events, for the most part drawing on the monocultural model of classical attachment theory to analyze interactions between adults and children. Far less research has approached these rituals using triadic, systemic and intercultural categories of analysis in order to explore not only educators’ actions but also what is going on in their minds. In this paper, we discuss examples from a recent study on rituals of transition in the multicultural context of an infant toddler center, combining description of the timing, behaviors and interactive styles of children and adults, with analysis of the thoughts and representations of the educators.

After a brief theoretical introduction on the dialogic nature of empirical research in education within the theoretical framework of ecological paradigm and constructivist epistemology, the article focuses on some methodological devices that, in the authors’ view, facilitate the development of research processes based on the effective involvement of researchers and practitioners. Among these, particular attention will be paid to videoresearch and phenomenological interview as method options that - under certain conditions - make it easy to "visualize" and "verbalize" the educational experience, activate transformative learning and tighten the gap between research and practice in education. The argument put forward is based on experiences of empirical research conducted by the authors in early childhood settings.

This paper is the introduction to the Focus of Encyclopaideia, which puts the spotlight on the topic of research methods in education, with a special attention on qualitative methods. The introduction presents the aims and the overview of the Focus, which is meant to be more a multi-vocal analysis of some of the issues emerging during the research work and the reflections they generate, rather than an abstract and homogeneous discourse. Each paper addresses a specific topic that is relevant to the research methodology in education, contextualizes it within a concrete inquiry and describes the researcher’s reflective process of finding situated and rigorous solutions in order to contribute to the research validity.

The Campania Region, in order to protect the Italian Mediterranean Buffalo, established a set of yearly official controls on all buffalo products manufactured in the Region. Our work demonstrates the effect of such a measure on the production of the mozzarella cheese of buffalo and that of the mozzarella cheese of buffalo campana, in favour of the commercialization of aliud pro alio.

Pecorino di Laticauda is a traditional Italian goat milk cheese carrying a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO). Previously there was no information available on the microbiological characterization of Pecorino di Laticauda. The present work deals with the studies carried out on the microflora evolution during all the stages of maturation of cheese.

La velocità di adattamento alle situazioni è quel concetto che sta alla base del nuovo modo di fare e vivere il territorio. Esso accomuna sia gli aspetti di urgenza legati all’esigenza di trasformazione delle strutture territoriali per far sì che esse possano confrontarsi in maniera competitiva con territori che sempre di più devono aggiornare la propria immagine ed organizzazione per far fronte ai nuovi dettami e strategie imposti dalla globalizzazione, sia gli aspetti più strettamente economici e della produzione i quali, nelle sfide lanciate dalla mondializzazione dei mercati e dall’impellenza della sostenibilità - intesa nella sua accezione più ampia - risentono in maniera sempre più pressante della necessità di un aggiornamento o di una trasformazione continui.

Nell’ordine costituito della metropoli, i luoghi del divetimento sono spazl interni ai processi di accumulo, funzionali al ritmo della produzione. L’ordine stabilisce un posto preciso per “lo svago”inserito nella settimana lavorativa come elemento di ricarica per l’uomo-lavoratore, traendone anzi profitto.

L’articolo propone una riflessione teorica sulle potenzialità della videoricerca nella formazione degli educatori nei servizi per l’infanzia. La tesi che verrà argomentata è che la rilevanza formativa propria della videoregistrazione e del suo uso in contesto formativo possa essere implementata e resa ancora più incisiva dall’uso sinergico di diversi strumenti di ricerca/formazione (visuali e testuali). In particolare, l’intreccio tra la revisione di sequenze videoregistrate, l’analisi delle immagini, l’esplicitazione e il confronto sui significati provocati da domande-stimolo e il confronto (individuale e di gruppo), aumenta le potenzialità rappresentative e ri-rappresentative del video, consentendo agli educatori di sperimentare processi di revisione delle pratiche a più livelli.

We report a case of a 4-months infant with fever in the absence of other specific symptoms that has rapidly and unexpectedly developed acute liver failure (ALF) with coagulopathy and complicated with bone marrow failure without encephalopathy. The main viral infection agents (hepatitis virus A, B, C, Citomegalovirus, Ebstain Barr virus, Parvovirus B19, Adenovirus), drug-induced hepatotoxicity and metabolic disorders associated to ALF were excluded. Quantitative determination of Human Herpesvirus 6 (HHV6) genome was positive with a significant number of copies for mL. A favorable evolution of the clinical symptoms and a progressive hematochemical resolution were obtained. Plasma and Vitamin K were administrated as a support therapy for treating coagulopathy. The present case report and the cases’ review from the literature, evidence the importance of always including screening for HHV6 infection in the diagnostic approach to acute onset of liver failure. HHV6 is a common virus in the pediatric population with a greater number of cases of fulminant viral non-A, non-B, non-C hepatitis in immunocompetent patients due to this virus: these forms have often a high mortality rate and maybe necessitate liver transplantation; for this reason correct etiological agent identification is mandatory for the prognosis and it has to be based on the quantitative search of the virus’s genome. Pathogenesis of liver-induced damage associated to HHV6 remains unclear; however in vitro studies demonstrate the potential hepatotoxicity effects of this virus.

In this talk we give a report on a paper where we consider a model sum of squares of planar complex vector fields, being close to Kohn's operator but with a point singularity. The characteristic variety of the operator is the same symplectic real analytic manifold as Kohn's. We show that this operator is hypoelliptic and Gevrey hypoelliptic provided certain conditions are satisfied. We show that in the Gevrey spaces below a certain index the operator is not hypoelliptic. Moreover there are cases in which the operator is not even hypoelliptic. This fact leads to some general negative statement on the hypoellipticity properties of sums of squares of complex vector fields, even when the complex H\"ormander condition is satisfied.

Copyright of SCENARIO: Official Italian Journal of ANIARTI is the property of ANIARTI and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)