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The research presented in this chapter discusses the use of technology as a medium within the ecology and organization of a second to sixth grade literacy curriculum in Rome and in Florence. This is an example of an epistemological approach to schooling which “argues that knowledge is not acquired as a collection of abstract entities but rather is constructed in the context of the environment in which it is encountered. Context is integral to understanding; meaning varies from context, and understanding is constructed through this experience. Essential to this view is the social nature of learning: people construct knowledge socially through collaboration (Duffy et al., 1993).” This new epistemology particularly underlines the role of social dimensions in cognition and the centrality of tool mediated actions (Zinchenko, 1985; Wertsch, 1990), i.e., of actions, even verbal ones, carried out by the participants, which are always mediated by tools, media and technology. In teaching, actions are more strictly dependent on the systems of signs (Vygotskij, 1934/1990) and methodologies which characterize different subject matters.

Cross‐cultural examinations of teaching and schooling can help one gain a new, more open perspective on that which is the closest at hand. One's own experiences provide a personal framework through which all subsequent perceptions are filtered, so that what may seem “objective” is really a view colored by past events and performances. This paper presents information gained from a year spent observing and talking with teachers and teacher trainers in Italy, a country in which the statement “There is no reading problem in Italy” is often heard and just as often qualified by exceptions. By looking at the processes and procedures which match and vary from the norm of the United States, one can begin to sort out those things that may be operational or philosophical “giyens” in reading education from those things which vary in a different cultural context.

In this paper we aim at analyzing the modes of differentiation in children’s writing development during the presyllabic phase that, in the theoretical framework developed by Ferreiro and Teberosky, comes before the discovery of sound correspondance. Seventeen Italian children were interviewed seven times during the implementation of research on «Educational Continuity» between «scuola materna» and primary school. We first examine how minimum quantity and internal variation rules appear in Italian children as organizing principles for controlling quantity and quality of writing, and as necessary conditions for the differentiation process. Starting from this, it is possible to find two differentiation modes in writing; aformal one, and a mode in which some type ofexternal referent is used (meaning or object features). For most children the two modes are alternatives, and passing from one to another is a possible but not necessary step. The external group (which is older) has significantly less quantity repertoire than the formal one: this can explain why looking for an external point of reference can be an outcome of the child’s formal research for differentiating writings.

Research on children's social cognition has dealt mainly with face to face relations; only a few studies have considered how children understand impersonal aspects of society such as economics. This study involves an investigation of teaching the concepts of work and profit to third-graders. Five instruction units were created and during a one-month period these were presented to five classes at different schools in Rome. A sample of 80 pupils was interviewed before and after teaching aimed at ascertaining their ideas on prices, profit and product distribution. Children's responses were scored on several scales, on which separate ANOVAs (class x sex x repeated measures or class x repeated measures) were carried out. The results show an overall improvement in children's knowledge, with differences that may be related not only to the complexity of the different concept but also to children's initial levels of competence.

The Committee on General and Technical Education of the Council of Europe has organized a number of conferences on teacher in-service training in the past few years. One of these was the meeting held at Frascati in December 1969, which is the topic of the following article. The author, Clotilde Pontecorvo, gives a critical account of the conference and intersperses references to national developments based on the questionnaire data gathered in preparation for the conference. Understandably, the Italian situation is given particular (and critical) attention.

The aim of this study is to test develo pmental changes in metalinguistic skills in primary school children, using the distinction proposed by Bialystock (1986) between «analyzed knowledge» and «executive control», as two components of metalinguistic awareness involved in different tasks. 60 first, second ami third grade children were individually interviewed on two tasks. In the first task (guided word substitution) children were asked to substitute an underlined word with five alternatives, thus producing new sentences to be judged on their semantic and/ or morpho-syntactical acceptability. In the second task (free word substitution), children have to fiad out the word that can be cancelled ami substituted with a new one. In both tasks children have to express an acceptability judgement, giving reasons for it. Each subject receives two scores for each task. Results from two-way Anova show that the «control» component does not change much, while the «analyzed knowledge» changes signi ficantly, although alto third grade children are more aware of semantic than of morpho-syntactic features of language.

This study, part of a larger longitudinal research project, examined the process and products of story dictation of beginning readers. The subjects were 14 six-year-old Italian school children from low socioeconomic backgrounds who were interviewed four times (March, May, December and May of the following year) over a period of 16 months. In the interviews, the subjects were asked to construct and dictate a story in response to a picture stimulus, to reflect on their own stories, and to respond to questions from the scribes. The products (the stories) were analyzed for story structure elements, variety of verbal tenses, use of connectives, and anaphoric references. The processes (metatextual elements of interaction with the scribe) were analyzed according to variations in dictation speed, text segmentation, terminal signalling, and indications of revision. Results support an emergent literacy perspective, provide direction for further research, and are related to the needs of the early childhood curriculum.

This paper presents the results of a curriculum of basic economic concepts given to 5 fourth-grade classes (Ss=95). The main topic of this curriculum was the production and distribution of agricultural produce, which had already proved to be difficult for the children. The proposed curriculum was largely inspired by the idea that familiarity with «social scenes» related to the economic process in question is necessary (although not sufficient) to allow children to understand such concepts. Children's level of understanding was tested before and after the curriculum by means of a semi-structured interview on 3 main topics: farmers' use of produce; farmers' use of earnings; produce distribution. Answers were scored according to their complexity and correctness; variance analyses performed on the scores showed significant improvements, as well as differences between classes. A qualitative analysis of children's answers was also performed, with the aim of interpreting the nature of change in each topic.

Il contributo esamina il rapporto tra apprendimento e metacomunicazione nella classe multilingue, sulla base di dati raccolti in classi di scuola elementare e media. Si evidenzia il ruolo fondamentale dell'attività riflessiva nell'agire linguistico, distinguendo tra attività metalinguistica e attività metacomunicativa. Si descrivono forme e funzioni delle attività metalinguistiche e si indaga la relazione tra metacomunicazione e labelling accademico e sociale. Si illustra, infine, la struttura dei moduli per l'autoformazionedegli insegnanti: l'articolazione della lezione; i prerequisiti conoscitivi; le attività comunicative e metalinguistiche; le attività metacomunicative; le attiviità riflessive come obiettivo di apprendimento; la problematizzazione del labelling legato alle attività riflessive.