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This study aims to adapt and validate the Need for Cognition Scale – Short Version (NFCS; Cacioppo & Petty, 1982) in Italian adolescents. This instrument measures individual differences in the motivation and enjoyment in being involved in effortful cognitive activities. The Italian version of the scale, translated and adapted from the original version, is composed of 18 items and was administered to secondary school students. The confirmatory factorial analysis proved that the scale had two correlated factors measuring two different dimensions of motivations, namely approach and avoidance of effortful cognitive activities. The scale is also invariant for gender and for the administration measurement (on-line and paper-pencil). Results also indicated that the NFCS had good reliability indices and satisfactory convergent and discriminant validity. Thanks to its good psychometric properties, the Need for Cognition Scale has been proven to be a useful tool in both educational and research areas

The Italian position on financial literacy was critical even before the COVID-19 emergency. The Pisa 2018 report (OECD-2020) indicated a high risk of 'financial illiteracy', showing how, among the G20 countries, Italy was in the second last place for financial skills. The latest Consob reports show as 80% of Italian citizens are unable to choose effective financial products matching their needs. The debate on intervention methods and their effectiveness is still ongoing and today, in particular, an effort to design and adapt actions to the current situation is required. It is important to remember that ‘quality education’, ‘decent work and economic growth’ are among the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations General Assembly for the 2030 Agenda. In order to achieve these goals, it is also necessary to address economic and financial education interventions as early as to children and adolescents, since they are able to make economic decisions related to the goods available at their disposal and that helps them to become skilled citizens, active and aware agents as adults (Valle et al, 2020). To nowadays, in the Italian context, there is no curriculum dedicated to the development of economic and financial competences, but recently economic and financial issues have been included in the school Civic Education curriculum. This opens up the chance of projecting specific good practices: incorporating the study of economics into the curricula would enable teachers to systematically approach the subject and children to perceive and experience its relevance, as well as to understand the link between economic knowledge and other school subject areas. A useful modality is the so-called Learning Units, defined as interdisciplinary didactic pathways related to a specific topic that, through several methodologies, involve children and favor the acquisition and consolidation of notions. In the current scenario, the present paper seeks to use the Learning Units proj

Recent literature indicates that the main goal of financial education programs is to motivate and empower positive financial behaviors to enable learners to become good financial decision-makers. Decision-making ability develop from childhood and is closely related to specific components of prosocial behavior such as: fairness sensitivity, altruism, and intertemporal choice. In order to improve these skills, we designed a conversation-based training program for primary school children aimed at stimulating reflective thinking through class discussions. This chapter describes the theoretical framework of the training program, design process, and materials used, and discusses the qualitative evidences resulting from the training.

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The aim of this work is to investigate the factors promoting students’ engagement at school and supporting their well-being experience. According to the Positive Education there is a strong relationship between school environment and student’s well-being. Moreover, the quality of the school climate perceived by the students was found to influence engagement in school activities, as well. In this study, 153 students (M = 67) attending 10th grade were presented with tests and questionnaires to assess individual assets (personality traits, literacy skills), emerging appraisals (school-climate, well-being experience) and emerging actions (school engagement), according to the Student Well-Being Model. Path analysis showed that the best model does include neither individual assets nor direct effect of school climate on engagement, as the effect of school climate on engagement is mediated by well-being experience. The main result is that school climate has been confirmed as an important factor to be considered to improve engagement in school activities, but it is effective only when its influence can modify the well-being experience of the students. Moreover, the lack of significant effects of individual assets in the model suggests that improving school climate means to support well-being experience and, indirectly school engagement, irrespective to learning abilities and personality traits. This work encourages working in/with schools to implement positive education programs that support and sustain a positive school climate and culture for school-community wellbeing.

Although Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD) are described as specific difficulties in one or more academic areas, often socio-emotional problems are also reported to be related to well-being and school engagement. Moreover, recent evidence shows that emotional problems and reduced social support predict problematic use of new technologies, such as a smartphone, that can, in turn, increase these problems. In this study, we aimed to investigate socio-emotional functioning and its relation to well- being, school engagement, and problematic smartphone use. Social and emotional skills of 19 adolescents with a diagnosis of SLD and 19 control adolescents were assessed through a narrative test; adolescents were requested to narrate complete stories elicited by pictures representing social situations. Information on well-being and problematic smartphone use were collected through questionnaires. The comparison between groups showed differences in cognitive-social skills, although no significant differences in emotional functioning were found. Additionally, the perception of the social environment as supportive and trustworthy was related to general well-being for both groups, whereas the perception of limits and rules set by the adult world appeared to be related to a decreased investment in learning processes only for the SLD students. Finally, correlation analysis showed that smartphone use was associated with reduced perception of social support and to a decreased ability to understand and solve social situations. These results assert the critical role played by social information processing and social support in terms of well-being in adolescence, and contribute to enhancing knowledge of the mechanisms underlying problematic smartphone use in a clinical sample.

This study presents a web-based sentence comprehension test aimed at identifying high school students who are at risk for a language delay. By assessing linguistic skills on a sample of high school students with Italian as an L2 and their monolingual peers, attending a vocational school, we were able to identify a subgroup of L2 students with consistent difficulties in sentence comprehension, though their reading skills were within the average range. The same subgroup revealed to experience a lack of support within the school context, suggesting that poor L2 skills might be a critical variable to consider in order to identify students at risk for school exclusion. Regarding the test, accuracy to the on-line sentence comprehension task was significantly predicted by reading abilities and vocabulary skills, thus indicating that this test might represent a rapid but efficient way to assess linguistic abilities at school. We recommend that establishing a valid and practical procedure for the evaluation of linguistic skills in bilingual students who struggle with their L2 is the first step toward promoting social inclusion in the multilingual classroom, in order to increase their ability to actively participate in school and social activities.

Recent evidence showed that it is possible to help children's Theory of Mind (ToM) development during preschool and middle childhood. This study aimed to promote advanced mentalizing skills in children attending Year 2 of primary school through a ToM training programme based on narra- tives followed by multiple-choice questions and conversa- tions about mental states. Participants were 49 children, aged between 7 and 8 years (Mage = 7.6 years; SD = 3.98 months), assigned to the experimental (27 chil- dren, 11 boys) or to the control condition (22 children, 7 boys). The two groups were matched at pretest for age, ToM, socio-economic background, reading comprehension, and executive functioning. The classroom-training pro- gramme was delivered by an experimenter in four sessions (each 50 min long). The ToM group improved ToM skills sig- nificantly more than the control group both in the practiced and in the transfer ToM task. Theoretical and practical impli- cations of our findings are discussed. Highlights • We developed and tested the efficacy of a training programme for improving theory of mind skills in children aged 7–8 years. • The ToM training programme was effective in promoting advanced ToM skills at school in children aged 7–8 years. • The study fits with the experiential-learning account according to which social and pedagogical experiences shape socio- cognitive development.

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