The Italian School at the Time of COVID-19—Implications for Students at the Personal and Didactic Level

The author takes up the problem of education in Italy in the time of COVID-19. The objective of this article is to understand the impact of COVID-19 on the progress of school and the lives of children and adolescents. To pursue this cognitive objective, the author conducted an analysis of the relevant literature published between February 2020 and January 2021, mainly in Italian. The author has also formulated three research questions that will help investigate the above problem. The article is written with the help of the analytical method and takes into consideration the literature on the subject dedicated to children and adolescents. The analysis of the literature allowed the author to formulate final conclusions, which were developed in close correlation with the accepted research questions.

Physical Education for Italian School Children during the Totalitarian Fascist Regime

Recent general and educational historiography suggests that, under Mussolini, physical training was viewed as a key instrument for disciplining children’s ideas and values as well as their bodies, and thus for inoculating them with fascist ideology. In this essay, I trace the evolution of the regime’s totalitarian educational project in relation to the teaching of physical education in primary schools, a novel topic and heuristic perspective that has been typically overlooked by historiographers. To this end, I analyse national legislation, school curricula, ministerial circulars, and teachers’ manuals and journals, examining developments in physical education for school-age children in terms of both its pedagogical or ideological meanings and the teaching methods adopted.

Energy Requalification of “Raffaello” School in Pistoia

In 2017, 46.5% of school buildings in Italy needed urgent maintenance regarding architectural usability and accessibility, but also concerning structural, energy, and environmental aspects. A total of 36% of the energy needs during the operational and management phase of the Italian school sector are required by secondary schools. The main objective of this paper is to propose an integrated (architectural, energy, and environmental) redevelopment for the “Raffaello” School in Pistoia (Italy), aimed at improving the environmental and technological system and decreasing the building’s primary energy demand. Here, for the sake of brevity, we will only deal explicitly with energy rehabilitation. The results show that the replacement of the artificial lighting system with LED lamps alone leads to a 45% decrease in primary energy demand.

Social Integration of Second Generation Students in the Italian School System

Cultural divides and prejudice complicate the processes of integration and acculturation of migrant families living in a foreign country. Evaluating the impact of such phenomenon can be crucial for social stability and policy making. In this context, the education system has a leading role in fostering and attaining social integration, in particular when it comes to younger sections of the migrant population. In this work, we propose a method for the construction of a quantitative indicator capturing social integration of second generation students in the Italian school system according to areas defined by nationality of the students and administrative region in which they attend school. The indicator, based on survey data, is estimated by means of a 2-step methodology. In the first step, we choose an individual qualitative variable capturing social integration at the unit level, and we compute a first direct estimate of the indicator as the proportion of highly integrated students in each area. Such variable is isolated following alternatively a proxy variable approach or a latent variable model approach. In the second step, we make use of two alternative small area models to improve the estimates, dealing with missing values, low sample size and high variability in smaller domains. At the end, the 2-step methodology results in 4 alternative versions of a synthetic indicator of social integration, that can be used to rank nationalities and administrative regions.

The Italian School Psychologists’ Role: A Qualitative Study about Professional Practices and Representations

School psychologists’ relevance has been broadly affirmed. However, there is no shared definition of their professional role, and more efforts are needed to promote an organisational and whole-school approach. The present study aims to investigate practices and representations of Italian school psychologists, advance knowledge of the status and development of school psychology, and learn more about the approaches currently adopted in schools. A qualitative method was used and 11 focus groups with a total of 86 participants were carried out. Ad hoc instruments were defined. The results highlighted that school psychologists are more focused on building one-on-one relationships, whereas relationships with the organisation as a whole appear to be more difficult. However, participants reported a wide range of activities, targeted to both the individual and the organisation. Moreover, efforts to strengthen the relationships with school principals and the entire school community were described. Specific needs emerged and the necessity to better define the school psychologists’ role was reported by the participants. More efforts are needed to promote an organisational approach among Italian school psychologists and specific training should be offered.

DESIGNING WITH EMOTIONAL AWARENESS

The Italian school building heritage built between the seventies and eighties is every year increasingly abandoned and it remains in a state of neglect. It is increasingly necessary a recovery and enhancement methodology that preserves the memory of the place and at the same time, it makes it capable of adapting to the new needs of the city. The proposed research project originates from the study of the interactions between man and the environment applied to an architectural context with the identification of emotions. This methodology applied to citizenship, aims to make the population participate in the improvement from the point of view of well-being. This process was possible thanks to the combined use of immersive reality (VR) and the use of the GEW model, the data of which are the foundation and verification of the choices of architectural design, analyzed through the impacts on humans.