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In the last two years, a growing number of studies have focused on the promotion of students' mental health to address the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, less studies have been conducted on sustaining teachers' mental health which has been affected by the sudden changes in online teaching and the difficulties in keeping and building relationship with students. Even before the pandemic, teaching has long been recognised as one of the most challenging occupations characterized by high levels of stress. Although the research highlighted the key role of mental health promotion among teachers, there is still a lack of programs enhancing teachers' wellbeing. This study examined the impact of the PROMEHS program, a school-based curriculum, on teachers' mental health. A total of 687 teachers participated in the study. Applying a pre- and post-training study design with experimental and waiting list groups, teachers were evaluated in social and emotional learning, resilience, and self-efficacy. The results showed that there was a significant improvement in all competences of the teachers in the experimental group compared to those in the waiting list group. The paper discusses the implications of the findings with recommendations for further studies in the area.

The paper describes the international research conducted in collaboration between the University of Padova, University of North Texas, and Windesheim University of Applied Sciences. The study explores how higher education faculty involved in professionalizing courses for the educational area perceive the pandemic-induced transition to digitalized education (DE), after one year of experience with it. This paper introduces the second phase of a research study that began as early as spring 2020, with an online survey distributed worldwide. It seeks to investigate possible changes after one year of digitalized education related to (1) perceptions of institutional support and professional training offered; (2) potential and challenges of DE; and (3) professional intentions for future uses of DE. Details on the instrument's reliability and structure will also be provided. We are exploring how the DE is changing teachers' routines and whether these changes are paving the way for collaborative, reflective, and student-centred approaches that could have long-term consequences. This is to help focus future training pathways to better support teachers in teaching effectively and efficiently for learning, both in times of crisis and in times of normalcy.

In this article we present a case study concerning a simple but efficient technical and logistic concept for the realization of blended teaching of mathematics and its applications in theoretical mechanics that was conceived, tested and implemented at the Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering (DICAM) of the University of Trento, Italy, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The concept foresees "traditional" blackboard lectures with a reduced number of students physically present in the lecture hall, while the same lectures are simultaneously made available to the remaining students, who cannot be present, via high-quality low-bandwidth "online streaming." The case study presented in this paper was implemented in a single University Department and was carried out with a total of n=1011 students and n=68 professors participating in the study. Based on our "first key assumption" that traditional blackboard lectures, including the gestures and the facial expressions of the professor, are even nowadays still a very efficient and highly appreciated means of teaching mathematics at the university, this paper deliberately does "not" want to propose a novel pedagogical concept of how to teach mathematics at the undergraduate level, but rather presents a "technical concept" of how to "preserve" the quality of traditional blackboard lectures even during the COVID-19 pandemic and how to make them "available" to the students at home via online streaming with adequate audio and video quality even at low internet bandwidth. The "second key assumption" of this paper is that the teaching of mathematics is a dynamic "creative process" that "requires" the "physical presence" of students in the lecture hall as audience so that the professor can instantaneously fine-tune the evolution of the lecture according to his/her perception of the level of attention and the facial expressions of the students. The "third key assumption" of this paper is that students need to have the possibility to interact with each other personally, especially in the first years at the university. We report on the necessary hardware, software and logistics, as well as on the perception of the proposed blended lectures by undergraduate students from civil and environmental engineering at the University of Trento, Italy, compared to traditional lectures and also compared to the pure online lectures that were needed as emergency measure at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The evaluation of the concept was carried out with the aid of quantitative internet bandwidth measurements, direct comparison of transmitted video signals and a careful analysis of ex ante and ex post online questionnaires sent to students and professors.

This rapid systematic review aims to examine emerging evidence on the effects of COVID-19 on educational institutions and assess the prevalence of e-learning changes in the sector. This paper reviews literature on learning, teaching, and assessment approaches adopted since the COVID-19 outbreak, and assesses the impact on the sector, staff, and students, summarizing findings from peer-reviewed articles. It categorizes these into five key themes: (1) digital learning; (2) e-learning challenges; (3) digital transition to emergency virtual assessment (EVA); (4) psychological impact of COVID-19; and (5) creating collaborative cultures. This represents the first systematic review of COVID-19's impact on education, clarifying current themes being investigated. The author suggests that the term 'emergency virtual assessment' (EVA) is now added for future research discussion. Finally, the paper identifies research gaps, including researching the impact on lesser developed countries, the psychological impact of transition, and the important role of leadership and leadership styles during the transition and handling of the pandemic.

The genesis and spread of COVID-19 around the world since 2020 have caused severe impacts in every aspect of people's lives, from work life to recreation, social activities to physical health. Higher education has not been excluded. Universities have altered curriculum, changed delivery methods, provided more counseling, purchased new technology, and altered attendance policy for classroom, athletic, social and artistic events (Hamlin, 2021). To assess the impacts of these changes on college students, the authors created a questionnaire to ask students about their perceptions of these COVID-related impacts on their own personal lives. The survey had 56 questions about how the virus affected their academic, social, financial, physical and emotional lives. Over 800 students responded with objective input and subjective comments. Due to the volume of data, the authors have split the study into two parts. The survey results for the first part, academic and social aspects of the survey, were published in "Understanding the Impact of Covid-19 on College Student Academic and Social Lives," Research in Higher Education Journal Volume 41 (see http://www.aabri.com/manuscripts/213347.pdf). It will sometimes be referred to herein to provide clarity to the reader. The actual survey itself can also be found at that site. This paper focuses on the impact of the coronavirus on student financial and physical well-being, which have become major stressors to this age group and have contributed to higher levels of anxiety and depression. It also examines how the virus has affected their social and emotional well-being. Lastly, recommendations are made to help educators understand the severity of the problem, and to take action to provide assistance for those students who have been adversely affected.

School-home communication is a growing research field in social sciences, particularly in education sciences and communication studies. While previous studies have paid much attention to the importance of school-home interaction in supporting primary academic socialisation and progress of elementary school pupils, the role of teacher-parent communication and collaboration in influencing the development of children's and adolescents' digital skills remains an under-researched area. This paper employed thematic analysis of in-depth interviews with education experts in six European countries, providing an insight into their opinions and views on the problems in communication between homes and schools. The analysis identified main problems in and obstacles to school-home collaboration on children's digital skills development, and the changes the COVID-19 pandemic brought along in this field of education. The paper provides five policy recommendations for enhancing school-home collaboration on digital skills development.

The M@t.abel2020 project supported Italian teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic period, proposing activities based on the mathematics laboratory teaching method which are suitable for distance learning situations. The project resulted in the establishment of an online community of 1,500 teachers. In this paper we present an exploratory study based on an open-ended questionnaire assigned to teachers involved in the project, with the aim of analyzing the results of this training project in terms of mathematics teacher's specialized knowledge. Results show that the project enriched teachers' knowledge not only in terms of pedagogical content knowledge but also in mathematical knowledge.

There is not a large body of literature about digital resources found and accessed autonomously by high school students while studying mathematics, whereas this topic has become more and more relevant in times of lockdown due to the pandemic. Italy has been one of the first countries facing lockdown for an extended time, making this country a paradigmatic example: in this paper we investigate what kind of digital resources are accessed by the Italians high school students who actually use them and why. According to our results, students' aims and expectations vary according to the school grade, but are not as much devoted to procedural learning as previous literature has shown. Also, we observe that the type of searched media (text, video, image, etc.) is related to the mathematical contents and to students' objectives.

During the second semester of the 2019/2020 academic year, due to the regulatory restrictions arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, Bologna University, like many others, was compelled to stop delivering its face-to-face offering and to switch, in a very short time, to the creation of a technological architecture that would enable students to continue their education through teaching via Distance Learning. After illustrating the active teaching model adopted in two courses offered by the University of Bologna Department of Education Studies, this paper addresses future educators by focusing on the main findings from a semi-structured online questionnaire completed by 84 students. The first part of the paper considers a rethinking of educational planning at the time of COVID-19, while the second and final part analyses student perceptions (using the questionnaire's open questions) of their Distance Learning experience in the initial phases of the pandemic scenario.

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 epistemological in nature. Particular attention is paid to the possibility of erecting an argumentative framework within the operational educational context as it takes place in the temporal and spatial dimensions of the school. Suggestions are provided regarding the set of "tools" useful for the constructive and creative management of didactic-pedagogical modalities inherent to "DAD" (acronym for the Italian "Didattica A Distanza", i.e., distance/remote teaching and learning), including combining the quantitative facets with the necessary qualitative facets, which are expressed in the category of the "bello" (beautiful), thus introducing the aesthetic value. Therefore, the concept of "benessere" (well-being) and that of "malessere" (malaise) are associated with the concept of "bellessere" (beautiful-being).

The University of Bergamo switched from regular classes to online classes due to the COVID-19 pandemic during March 2020, without leaving to the students the chance to meet their teachers in the traditional setting even once. As such, this context represents a unique opportunity to compare the traditional courses, held in the years before, with remote learning. In this paper, we focus on the lessons learned from switching a project management course that combines traditional lectures with Simulation-Based Training (SBT) to an online course with the same structure, same curriculum and the same teaching team. Lessons learned are based on the opportunity to compare the two methods of teaching and their learning outcomes. Based on the analysis, conclusions about the future of this course and similar courses are presented.

The paper presents a report that discusses the experience of participation of the authors in the EduHack, an online course designed to train university teachers in the use of digital techniques and learning strategies. This study highlights two issues of great interest in pandemic times. The first one is the structure and the organization of the EduHack course with some suggestions related to its improvement; the second one is Drag&Fly, the project idea of an e-learning web platform developed by the authors during the collaborative part of the course. The experience of participation to EduHack course has been analyzed by authors using concepts and categories of analysis widespread in the pragmatic theoretical tradition, enhancing the possibility of changing the teachers' approach to the design and the implementation of a higher education e-learning course.

In the last few years, several initiatives based on extracurricular activities have been organized in many countries around the world, with the aim to reduce the digital gender gap in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) fields. Among them, the Digital Girls summer camp, organized every year since 2014 by two Italian universities with the aim to attract female students to ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) disciplines, represents quite a unique initiative for its characteristics of long-duration (3-4 entire weeks) and complete gratuitousness for the participants. The COVID-19 emergency imposed severe changes to such activities, that had to be modified and carried out in the online mode as a consequence of social distancing. However, on one hand, the general lack of high-quality evaluations of these initiatives hinders the possibility to understand the actual impact of extracurricular activities on the future academic choices of the participants. On the other hand, the availability of data collected over different editions of Digital Girls has allowed us to analyze the summer camp impact and to evaluate the pros and cons of in-presence and online activities. The main contribution of this paper is twofold. First, we present an overview of existing experiences, at the national (Italian) and international levels, to increase female participation in integrated STEM and ICT fields. Second, we analyze how summer camp participation can influence girls' future academic choices, with specific attention to ICT-related disciplines. In particular, the collection of a significant amount of data through anonymous surveys conducted before and after the camp activities over the two editions allowed us to evidence the different impacts of in-presence and online extracurricular activities.

In the last year a new virus (SARS-CoV-2) and the disease caused by it (COVID-19) has quickly spread around the world, leading the World Health Organization to declare a public health emergency and, then, a global pandemic status. The strategies adopted by many countries to reduce the impact of the pandemic were mainly based on social distancing rules and on stay-at-home measures or lockdowns. These strategies had severe disruptive consequences on many sectors, including all levels of education. While the "traditional" (face-to-face) Higher Education (HE) system was unprepared for the lockdown (e.g., no plans for a massive shift to online teaching were available/ready), it reacted in an extremely quick and effective way, replacing face-to-face teaching with online teaching. While COVID-19 has been extremely challenging for education, the experience has undoubtedly provided positive inputs for the digitalization of the HE system. The question is however, if whether after the COVID-19 emergency everything will go back to the previous situation or instead if the pandemic has irreversibly changed HE. While we are still in the middle of the crisis, it is in our view beneficial to start to reflect on the challenges and open issues that emerged during this period and the lessons learned for the "new normal" (as it is often referred to). In this conceptual paper we seek to start this discussion by focusing on the following relevant aspects that should be considered to succeed in the digital transformation: broadband network infrastructure and hardware devices; e-learning software; organization of teaching activities; pedagogical issues; diversity and inclusivity; and a number of other issues. We conclude that the COVID-19 pandemic will irreversibly change HE and probably for the better.

The University of Naples Federico II (Italy) offers a nine-month formative training program aimed at software development for the Apple technology ecosystem to ~400 learners per year and utilises the Challenge Based Learning ("CBL") methodology as a framework for learning. As a collaborative and self-guided, inquiry-based learning method, it focuses on learners' intrinsic motivation while working on real world problems organised in projects ("Challenges" in "CBL") with an experiential and progressive approach to apply acquired knowledge in real world scenarios, ideate solution concepts and build innovative digital products. To overcome limitations of spiral curriculum or elaboration theory, the authors applied narrative theory to design the program's educational experience for the academic year 2019/2020 as a cohesive journey within a communal learning environment with a coherent and connected structure of narratively driven learning Challenges. The authors present concepts to develop their approach further towards an emergent narrative experience design system to manage the educational journey as it develops, rather than scripting it. This paper evolves the authors' Narrative Experience Design Canvas to model educational experience design that encourages unscripted, emergent narratives for experiential education with the goal of fostering learners' engagement, agency and creativity. Derived in part by models developed for digital interactive storytelling or educational video games, it categorises the components for designing an educational experience that allows the learning progression to be driven by learners as co-authors and describes mechanisms that allow unscripted narratives to emerge based on intrinsic motivation. Additionally, the authors present considerations for synchronous and asynchronous learning to evolve their framework for application in blended or remote learning scenarios. Drawing upon findings for remote learning and experiential e-learning - ee-learning - presented by scholars as well as implications identified during the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting switch to remote learning within the program at University of Naples Federico II in 2020, it is shown how combining narrative elements with experiential e-learning principles can result in increased engagement, motivation and sense of community in learners. Using the example of an individual learning unit - a Challenge - considerations from overall course design down to day-to-day learning activities within the course are presented. For the future, the authors indicate action points to develop this model into an Emergent Narrative System for designing narratively driven and experiential software development education programs and indicate areas of further research on learning activity design for blended or remote learning experiences.

The COVID-19 pandemic has evidenced a need for tools and methodologies to support students' autonomous learning and the formative assessment practices in distance education contexts, especially for students from challenging backgrounds. This paper proposes a conceptualization of Interactive Feedback (IF) for Mathematics, which is a step-by-step interactive process that guides the learner in the resolution of a task after one or more autonomous tentative. This conceptualization is grounded on theories and models of automatic assessment, formative assessment, and feedback. We discuss the effectiveness of the IF for engaging students from low socio-economic contexts in closing the gap between current and reference performance through a didactic experimentation involving 299 Italian students in grade 8. Using quantitative analyses on data from the automatic assessment, we compared the results of the first and last attempts in activities with and without IF, based on algorithmic parameters so that the task changes at every attempt. We found that IF was more effective than other kinds of activities to engage learners in actions aimed at improving their results, and the effects are stronger in low socio-economic contexts.

The COVID-19 crisis has strongly affected the school system. In Italy, at-distance forms of didactics have been activated, changing the physiognomy of schools in terms of social interaction, practices and the identity of the individuals. In this paper, we address the issue of how teachers are facing the crisis: our focus is on assessment, as a key variable catalyzing personal history; beliefs; the interface between students; teachers and the school system. We study teachers' beliefs as part of their identities and assessment as a fundamental variable of beliefs. A qualitative content analysis of the open-ended answers to an online questionnaire is carried out to understand the main characteristics associated with assessment by teachers and the obstacles to overcome in the context of long distance learning (LDL). The data show that teachers did not identify valid assessment methods for LDL during the lockdown, especially due to the lack of control over the students. A misconception emerges concerning the definition of formative assessment together with a new awareness of the possibilities offered by digital technologies regarding the individualization of didactics. This study helps to understand which teachers' beliefs are related to assessment are and how they are shaped.

In the relationship between teachers and distance learning in the context of COIVD-19, a series of unprecedented dynamics have emerged relating to a process of open-air experimentation that is going on in the world of school. The main constructs investigated in this paper concern the professional perceptions of teachers in terms of their skills and resistances towards digital technologies. To investigate this topic, a questionnaire on distance learning was administered to a sample of 658 teachers. From a methodological point of view, factor and reliability analyses and correlation and regression analyses were conducted. From the analysis of the results, it emerged that the questionnaire measures the resistance of teachers to distance learning and focuses on three main dimensions (two positive and one negative) that link teachers' perceptions to the resistance to distance learning. In conclusion, the theme of the acceptance of technologies in the practice of teachers is still a subject full of meaning for professional perception and vision. A second issue concerns precisely the relationship between digital technologies and users, which must no longer focus only on the relationship with students but also on the perspective of the other training actors, including teachers.

This paper presents the perceptions on distance learning approaches, assessed through an online survey, using experimental design of ideas (Mind Genomics). Students and professors of higher education institutions who had not yet experienced distance learning before COVID-19 pandemic period participated in the study. The participants belong to the universities located in Mediterranean basin, e.g., Albania, Italy, Morocco, Algeria and few African countries. Results suggest that distance learning will shift many of the responsibilities formerly on the professors to those of the students. The data suggests the need for emotional support during this transition, specifically to maintain interaction among students and professor as well as among students themselves in distance learning platforms as in traditional classrooms. The study shows that the effectiveness and the interactivity of this new paradigm are very important and any further developments of distance learning should provide strong support for these components. The position of the professor is indispensable as the guide to the entire process, suggesting that at least at the time of this writing (2020) distance learning approach is perceived only to be an intermittent complementary path to in-person interactions.

The competition of civilizations forced the European universities to adapt to the competition with the Chinese and American universities. European integration cannot advance without the collaboration between European universities. An answer to these challenges is the CIVICA project, the European University of Social Sciences, a consortium of the following universities: Bocconi University (Italy), Central European University (Hungary), European University Institute (European Intergovernmental Organization), Hertie School of Governance (Germany), The National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (Romania), Sciences Po (France) and the School of Economics in Stockholm (Sweden). This experiment aims to become one of the European pilot universities, in the first round of applications for Erasmus+ in February 2019. The experiment takes into consideration the most important resource of a country: the human resource. The network of universities that are part of the CIVICA consortium will group approximately 38,000 students, 7,000 teachers and 3,000 people from the administrative apparatus. The London School of Economics is part of the CIVICA consortium, as an associate partner. At the Bucharest conference, the public presentation of the consortium and its objectives, the rectors of the seven universities set out to educate the future generations of professionals in social sciences, in order to solve the most pressing problems of the world. Creating a European identity is essentially the long-term, fundamental objective of the CIVICA consortium. In the context of this conference, we interviewed a few representatives of CIVICA, and their answers will be analyzed in this paper's section dedicated to the results of the research.

With the COVID-19 outbreak and the resulting lockdown, Italian schools have continued to provide education using distance learning systems. In this emergency, the primary aim of the Ministry of Education was to guarantee each student's right to education. The expression "School Never Stops" ("La Scuola non si ferma") is a clear response to the country's isolation and a demonstration of the school staff's commitment. This paper describes Italy's educational response during the lockdown by illustrating the measures undertaken by the Ministry of Education and the initiatives by private and public organizations. The challenges of distance education during the pandemic emergency and future directions for the reopening of schools in September are also examined and discussed.

With schools and universities closing across Europe, the COVID-19 lockdown left actors in the field of education battling with the unprecedented challenge of finding a meaningful way to keep the wheels of education turning online. The sudden need for digital solutions across the field of education resulted in the emergence of a variety of digital networks and collaborative online platforms. In this joint article from scholars around Europe, we explore the COVID-19 lockdowns of physical education across the European region, and the different processes of emergency digitalization that followed in their wake. Spanning perspectives from Italy, Germany, Belgium, and the Nordic countries, the article's five cases provide a glimpse of how these processes have at the same time accelerated and consolidated the involvement of various commercial and non-commercial actors in public education infrastructures. By gathering documentation, registering dynamics, and making intimations of the crisis as it unfolded, the aim of the joint paper is to provide an opportunity for considering the implications of these accelerations and consolidations for the heterogeneous futures of European education.

What 'sources' of knowledge do higher education students draw on, to prepare for exams? And has the pandemic made any difference? The study presented in this paper addresses these questions, in the belief that gaining awareness of the sources through which students learn is important for the instructional design of the courses and the evaluation methods as well. Framed within the 'Distributed Cognition' theory, the study is based on a questionnaire proposed in July 2021 (summer exam session) to all the students of two schools at Politecnico di Milano (the largest technical university in Italy); 5,369 students responded (16.5% of the total). The results show that students normally resort to a wide range of resources (lectures, lecturer's slides, group work with other students, notes taken by other students, etc.) and that, in the COVID-19 time, recorded lectures and 'exercises' (i.e. practical sessions with a teacher assistant) skyrocket in their perception of relevance, overcoming (almost all) other sources. Academies will need to face the challenge of students advocating for keeping this kind of support even after the COVID-19 era, which has the potential of revolutionising the way universities work, leading towards blended forms of education.

The suspension of face-to-face teaching activities, due to the pandemic emergency, led universities to rearrange their teaching strategies using online learning environments and video-conference tools as a temporarily replacement of classrooms, without an accurate attention to training strategies. In this scenario, there is a need to reconsider current practices in order to determine the appropriate development strategies of academic policies to address the future of innovation of higher education. The purpose is to develop a training system that could adequately integrate users' needs, capitalise good practices and provide a boost in innovation caused by the distance learning experience. A right step in this direction is to develop a higher education context marked by high level of learning environments' hybridisation that could flexibly answer users' needs and meet increasing demand for professionalism in the work marketplace. In this paper, a documentary research of university Emergency Distance Learning practices is presented. The aim is to draw the profile of current situation in order to reflect on future development trajectories of higher education.

The school closures necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic created a rapid shift to alternative modes of educational delivery, primarily online learning and teacher-supported home-schooling. This shift has revealed deep inequities in education systems worldwide, as many children lost access to teachers and schooling. An effective response to these changes has tested teachers' personal capacities and individual and collective agency intensely. The research lab we report on within this paper aimed to develop a better understanding of teacher agency in meeting the challenges of the pandemic and the physical and relational enablers and constraints of their environment. Drawing on case study reports from six international contexts and a series of online discussions with research lab participants, this study explores teachers' enactment of agency in the context of various circumstances and environments. The authors argue that it is imperative that education systems support the enhancement of teachers' personal and collective agency in the face of continued disruption to schooling and ongoing challenges to educational equity.

Media education is a cultural framework that can be applied in different contexts: schools, families, informal educational environments, along with pastoral work. With Pope Francis' championing, there is an increasing need to bridge pastoral care and the media, which can become new important forms of proximity and open opportunities to connect and assume responsibility towards others. Our aim is to understand how parishes can think of themselves as third spaces. The paper tackles this question through the exploration of the initiative "Aperto per ferie." The initiative was created to enable professionals to experience the summer camp activities despite the COVID-19 pandemic, finding new ways of aggregation in pastoral youth clubs and taking advantage of digital community meetings. It developed a digital space to promote a unifying experience. With digital technologies, the boundaries of the community are redrawn. The correspondence with the territory (of the parish and the diocese) is no longer pre-determined. A community with porous edges is making its way and is more open and permeable to contributions coming from outside, and perhaps more accessible, even by those who do not frequent parish environments.

COVID-19 lockdown measures adopted by governments in March 2020 have impacted our society as never happened before. The school system was not an exception. Interventions to allow students for distance learning through the support of 'old' (e.g. TV) or 'new' media (e.g. digital platforms) have been promoted, involving millions of students and teachers worldwide. This paper presents a study on school leaders and teachers' perceptions on the school levels of digital readiness through the comparison of their views before and during the lockdown. The participation in the EU project DETECT provided the context for exploring the school levels of digital readiness. Data were collected belonging to two different phases and allowing to investigate teachers' perceptions in using technologies for remote teaching. The school is living an unprecedent period where dramatic experiences are also disclosing new opportunities. Our study found that school had a strategy before the COVID-19 emergency, but it was too focused on infrastructures' acquisition, while the development of competences on the side of both teachers and students requires an investment in long-term training, up to the point of reshaping the current teaching practices and also planning for interdisciplinary educational activities addressed to the students.

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 educational innovation. This paper describes an international study engaging teachers of professionalizing courses in the educational area across the world (N=120). The aim was to investigate their perception of the induced distance education in terms of teaching methodology and assessment practices. Emerging findings indicate a silver lining in the midst of the pandemic storm, as teaching practices gear more towards being student-centred.

In 2014, the European Union adopted the Seasonal Workers Directive to achieve a twofold aim: meeting employers' demand for flexible and cheap labour and enhancing protection for third-country national (TCN) workers. Especially Article 23, the equal treatment provision, triggered a cautious optimism among scholars and trade unions, which looked at the Directive as a source of increased protection for seasonal workers. However, trade unions also pointed out the limited reach of the Directive, criticising its lack of commitment and ambition. Over the years, and especially during the Covid pandemic, it became clear that the Seasonal Workers Directive did not represent a game-changer for TCN seasonal workers, whose increased protections remained true only on paper. This contribution draws on the case of Italy during the pandemic to understand the reasons for the Directive's limited impact. The article critically examines the different political tensions underpinning the adoption of the Directive, to better understand why the Directive is not applied in practice and how it impacts the labour market and migrants' social conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the pattens of international collaboration by analysing publications on COVID‐19 published in the first 6 months of the pandemic. The data set comprised articles on COVID‐19 indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection (WoS CC) downloaded four times between 1 April 2020 and 1 June 2020. The analysis of 5,827 documents revealed that 128 countries, 23,127 authors, and 6,349 institutes published on the pandemic. The data reveal that the three main publishing countries were the USA, China, and England with Italy closely following. Although publication was widely spread, most of the institutions with the highest volume of output were in China. Network analysis showed growth in international cooperation with an average degree of country/region cooperation rising to 23.06 by 1 June. There was also a clear core‐periphery structure to international collaboration. Institutional collaboration was shown to be highly regionalized. The data reveal a high and growing incidence of international collaboration on the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Catholic world, pilgrimages and other devotional rituals are often undertaken to foster healing and well-being. Thus, shrines dedicated to saints are particularly relevant in times of pandemic. Pilgrimage to the shrines associated with 20th century Italian stigmatic, St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, known as one of the Catholic world's most popular saints, is particularly informed by this notion, as Pio is understood as a healing saint thanks to the spiritual and corporal works of mercy that marked his ministry during his lifetime, as well as belief in the miraculous nature of his relics. Pio's hometown of Pietrelcina and his shrine at San Giovanni Rotondo boast millions of religious tourists each year, especially from Italy, Ireland and the Philippines--many of whom come with the expressed purpose of healing their ailments, praying for others who are suffering, or rendering thanks for healing received through the saint's intercession. The current COVID-19 crisis has also seen the faithful turn to Pio for the alleviation of this new form of suffering. This paper thus argues that Padre Pio can be considered a 'pandemic saint'--one to whom the faithful pray specifically to alleviate their suffering and that of the community, and who serves as a model for moral behaviour, during a pandemic. First, employing ethnohistorical analysis and a close reading of Pio's writings, I trace the development of Pio's 'ministry of mercy,' which is predicated on the Christological ideal of suffering as a proxy for others. In particular, I show that Pio's stigmata experience in 1918, and the meteoric rise of devotion and pilgrimage to him, was a partial result of the world's last great pandemic, the Spanish Flu. Second, drawing on over a decade of ethnographic research at Pio's shrines, interviews and analysis of news media during the current COVID-19 pandemic, and an examination of Pope Francis' public discourses on both Pio and the coronavirus outbreak of 2020, I argue that Pio can also be considered a 'pandemic saint' for COVID-19. Third, the paper ends with an update on the impacts of COVID-19 on the main Italian shrines to Pio, which despite their importance and relevance for alleviating pandemic suffering, were closed to mass religious tourism and pilgrimage during Italy's harsh quarantine in spring 2020, and are now beginning to contemplate new ways to serve the faithful and promote Pio as a pandemic saint in a post-COVID world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic is bringing disruptive effects on the healthcare systems, economy and social life of countries all over the world. Even though the elder portion of the population is the most severely affected by the COVID-19 disease, the counter-measures introduced so far by governments took into little account the age structure, with restrictions that act uniformly on the population irrespectively of age. In this paper, we introduce a SIRD model with age classes for studying the impact on the epidemic evolution of lockdown policies applied heterogeneously on the different age groups of the population. The proposed model is then applied to age-stratified COVID-19 Italian data. The simulation results suggest that control measures focused to specific age groups may bring benefits in terms of reduction of the overall mortality rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The severe impact of global crises, such as COVID-19 and climate change, is plausibly reshaping the way in which people perceive risks. In this paper, we examine and compare how global crises and local disasters influence public perceptions of multiple hazards in Italy and Sweden. To this end, we integrate information about the occurrence of hazardous events with the results of two nationwide surveys. These included more than 4000 participants and were conducted in two different phases of the COVID-19 pandemic corresponding to low (August 2020) and high (November 2020) levels of infection rates. We found that, in both countries, people are more worried about risks related to experienced events. This is in line with the cognitive process known as the availability heuristic: individuals assess the risk associated with a given hazard based on how easily it comes to their mind. Epidemics, for example, are perceived as less likely and more impactful in Italy compared to Sweden. This outcome can be explained by cross-country differences in the impact of, as well as governmental responses to, COVID-19. Notwithstanding the ongoing pandemic, people in both Italy and Sweden are highly concerned about climate change, and they rank it as the most likely threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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