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IEA surveys traditionally include a teacher questionnaire among the contextual questionnaires aiming at collecting data on school factors that could be associated with students’ cognitive outcomes. This chapter discusses how data collected from teachers has played a role in IEA studies on civic and citizenship education from the Six Subjects Survey to the Civic Education Study (CIVED) 1999 and the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 2009 and 2016. Elements of continuity and discontinuity are identified over time in relation to the content and the structure of the teacher questionnaires adopted in each survey, looking at the conceptions of civic and citizenship education that informed the instruments’ development and at the changes that occurred over time in the delivering of civic and citizenship education at school. The use of data collected through the teacher questionnaire in IEA international reports as well as in secondary analyses is presented. A substantial increase in informative secondary analyses using teacher data has been registered in the last years, confirming the importance of the teacher questionnaire despite the difficulties in finding direct strong associations between teacher data and students’ outcomes. Civic and citizenship education is one of the school education areas most characterized by gaps between principles and official regulations, between intended and implemented curricula, and between theory (or ideals) and practices. The information gathered through the teacher questionnaire is of great relevance for a better understanding of the characteristics of the schools as learning environments and provides policymakers and researchers with data from the perspective of teachers on the democratic experience students actually have at school.

This article presents the results of the trials carried out within the Advenus project - Developing online resources for adult refugees (funded with the support of the European Commission, project ref. no. 2016-1-NO01-KA204-022090). Advenus aims at improving and extending the offer of high quality, culturally sensitive open access e-learning resources to adult refugees between the age of 18-40 and their trainers and teachers in EU countries. In detail, some preliminary considerations are made on the trials of five e-learning courses carried out in four countries, i.e. Norway, Italy, Portugal, and Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, for a total number of 267 refugees and asylum seekers involved in the project. Results show an high variability of the starting levels of learners with reference to the language of the hosting country, to basic e-skills and to education levels, and therefore the crucial need to design eLearning resources for different entry levels, connected with learners' needs and daily life experiences, preferably in hybrid forms of ICT supported learning, with face-to-face interventions. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Gaston Mialaret (Cahus, 1918-Garches, 2016) was one of the most prominent scholars in the field of psycho-pedagogy. This contribution tries to present briefly his career and principal works, and analyses specifically his study on Teacher Education (La formation des enseignants, Paris, Puf, "Que sais-je?" 1977) as it still provides meaningful insights on open and debated issues, in Italy and abroad. Mialaret’s clear and concise view on the link between education and research, on a progressive and controlled future teachers’ sense of responsibility, on the continuous monitoring and evaluation needed casts a light on the interpretation of the current state of Educational Research.

Reading a mathematical problem can be often challenging for students. To be successful, they need to understand the words, transposing their meaning on an abstract level, to identify the relations stated in the problem and the task requested. Even if the meaning of the words is known, the case can be given that the student cannot grab the global meaning, nor inferring useful implications to solve the problem. This article offers an overview on reading comprehension issues linked to mathematical texts, and then proposes a set of common mistakes made by young readers, emerged in a first exploratory field experience carried out with grade 7 students. Given that learning activities were carried out on the Pythagorean Theorem, specific attention was devoted to the transposition of words into geometrical figures.

Within its overarching purpose of investigating the ways in which young people are prepared to undertake their roles as citizens in a range of countries and through its questionnaire for students in participating European countries, the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study 2016 (ICCS 2016) addressed issues related to the specific European context and to the problems currently facing Europe. Decreased solidarity together with the increase in populist, nationalist, anti-establishment political parties in several European countries are the factors complicating dynamics linked not only to the original project of European integration but also to the economic and political relationships between countries (Archick, 2017). Furthermore, in recent years, public debate in Europe has been characterized by broad questions relating to citizens’ sense of belonging to Europe, the need for stronger cooperation among European countries, and concerns about immigration and the effects of the financial crisis.

The ICCS 2016 assessment framework (Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon, Losito, & Agrusti, 2016) identified several contexts that have the potential to influence not only students’ learning outcomes in the field of civic and citizenship education but also their civic engagement. These contexts include the wider community, the school and classroom, the home and peer environment, and characteristics of individual students.

This chapter provides findings on students’ attitudes toward European citizens having the freedom of movement that allows them to work and live throughout Europe. The chapter also considers findings on students’ attitudes toward equal rights for immigrants (e.g., voting, education). These constructs reflect the content domain related to students’ attitudes toward civic principles that is included in the affective-behavioral dimension of the ICCS 2016 assessment framework (Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon, Losito, & Agrusti, 2016).

This chapter examines constructs related to students’ attitudes toward civic society and systems (i.e., students’ attitudes toward European cooperation and the European Union, and students’ perceptions of Europe in the future). It also examines a construct related to students’ attitudes toward civic identities (i.e., students’ perceptions of their own individual future) (Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon, Losito, & Agrusti, 2016).

This chapter addresses Research Question 3 of the ICCS 2016 assessment framework (Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon, Losito, & Agrusti, 2016): What is the extent of students’ engagement in different spheres of society and which factors within or across countries are related to it?

Civic and citizenship education aims to provide young people with the knowledge, understanding, and dispositions that enable them to participate as citizens in society. It seeks to support emerging citizens by helping them understand and engage with society’s principles and institutions, develop and exercise informed critical judgment, and learn about and appreciate citizens’ rights and responsibilities.

The ICCS 2016 assessment framework (Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon, Losito, & Agrusti, 2016) states that any study of civic-related learning outcomes and civic engagement must consider the contexts in which civic and citizenship education occur.

ICCS regards civic knowledge as fundamental to effective civic participation. Within the context of ICCS, civic knowledge refers not only to familiarity with the civic and citizenship content described in the ICCS 2016 assessment framework but also to the ability to apply relevant cognitive processes to this content (Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon, Losito, & Agrusti, 2016). Civic knowledge is important in all four of the framework’s content domains.

This chapter explores data relating to ICCS 2016 Research Question 4: What beliefs do students in participating countries hold regarding important civic issues in modern society and what are the factors associated with their variation?

This chapter presents some results of the multivariate analyses of ICCS 2016 data that we conducted in an effort to explain variation in three commonly investigated outcomes of civic and citizenship education: civic knowledge, expected electoral participation, and expected active political participation.

This chapter examines students’ sense of their European identity, a construct that reflects the degree to which students identify with the European region and that is related to the affectivebehavioral domain attitudes in the ICCS 2016 assessment framework (Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon, Losito, & Agrusti, 2016). The chapter also presents findings on students’ opportunities to learn about Europe at school.

La educación cívica de los ciudadanos desempeña un rol igual de importante que la enseñanza de disciplinas como ciencias, matemáticas o literatura. A través de este Informe Internacional sobre Educación Cívica y Ciudadana (ICCS), la IEA no solo demuestra la importancia que otorga a la provisión de este tipo de formación sino también su compromiso e interés por investigar los puntos holísticos de la educación como disciplina. ESP

The present collective work gathers views on how behavioural finance, neuroscience, sociology, cognitive psychology and pedagogy may contribute to improve measurement of financial knowledge, elicitation of personal attitudes, targeting audiences and delivery of educational programmes. These issues are particularly relevant in Italy, where the recently established National Committee for Financial Education is going to set and implement a long called national strategy. Following a multidisciplinary perspective, the work is intended to give food for thought with regard to methods and tools that may foster effective initiatives and coordination among the academia and the stakeholders involved in the design and delivery of educational programmes.

Gabriella Agrusti It is widely recognized that prior knowledge plays a fundamental role in reading comprehension and in meaning construction. Generally, readers who are able to identify the typical structure of a text in a genre or to locate its content within the appropriate domain are said to better recall the ideas conveyed by the text. The text itself is a textus, a complex texture that includes rhetorical patterns on different directories (spatial, temporal, figurative), a network structure that offers several ways of integrating information based on relationships among its components. Poor readers are unlikely to make inferences to link these pieces of information into a coherent representation. Would the introduction of an image comprehension strategy improve students' reading comprehension of verbal texts? In this article the results of a research project carried out in Italy on adult readers, with particular reference to inferential processes in narrative anachronies, will be presented.

Le indagini comparative internazionali nell'educazione offrono diversi elementi di complessità, relativi sia ad aspetti metodologici sia a procedure di interpretazioni dei risultati, che sono ampiamente dibattuti tra gli specialisti e spesso non approfonditamente considerati dai mass-media e dai decisori politici, particolarmente in Italia. Seguendo l'impianto concettuale baconiano della pars denstruens e della pars construens, questo articolo presenta dapprima una serie di criticità evidenziate in passato dalle indagini internazionali e in alcuni dei più recenti sviluppi nel settore, allo scopo di eliminare, per quanto possibile, gli idola theatri che ostacolano una chiara comprensione di tali apporti conoscitivi. International comparative studies in education offer several elements of complexity, concerned with either survey methodology and procedures or the interpretation of results, that are highly debated among specialists and often not thoroughly considered by mass-media and policy makers, especially in Italy. Following the baconian scheme of pars denstruens and pars construens, this article proposes firstly a series of criticisms highlighted in the past about international surveys and then some of the most recent developments in the field, in order to remove, as far as possible, the idola theatri which obstacle a clear understanding of these contributions.

The civic and citizenship framework identifies and defines those aspects of cognitive and affective-behavioral content3 that should be considered important learning outcomes of civic and citizenship education. It should be noted that within the context of this framework the term “learning outcomes” is used in a broad way and is not confined to school learning. The way students develop cognitive knowledge and understanding of civics and citizenship, as well as affective-behavioral dispositions towards civics and citizenship, may depend on many factors beyond their learning environment at school (see Amna, Ekstrom, Kerr, & Stattin, 2009; Pancer, 2015; Pancer, & Pratt, 1999). The factors influencing students’ development of these learning outcomes are mapped and described in the contextual framework.