The Potential of Blockchain Technology in Higher Education as Perceived by Students in Serbia, Romania, and Portugal

Lifelong learning approaches that include digital, transversal, and practical skills (i.e., critical thinking, communication, collaboration, information literacy, analytical, metacognitive, reflection, and other research skills) are required in order to be equitable and inclusive and stimulate personal development. Realtime interaction between teachers and students and the ability for students to choose courses from curricula are guaranteed by decentralized online learning. Moreover, through blockchain, it is possible to acquire skills regarding the structure and content while also implementing learning tools. Additionally, documentation validation should be equally crucial to speeding up the process and reducing costs and paperwork. Finally, blockchains are open and inclusive processes that include people and cultures from all walks of life. Learning in Higher Education Institutions (HEI) is facilitated by new technologies, connecting blockchain to sustainability, which helps understand the relationship between technologies and sustainability. Besides serving as a secure transaction system, blockchain technology can help decentralize, provide security and integrity, and offer anonymity and encryption, therefore, promoting a transaction rate increase. This study investigates an alternative in which HEI include a blockchain network to provide the best sustainable education system. Students’ opinions were analyzed, and they considered that blockchain technology had a very positive influence on learning performance.

Reading the Romancero: A journey from the score to the sound with a non-professional choir

This case study focuses on the processes involved in co-constructing an interpretation of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Romancero Gitano with a non-professional choir. Rehearsals began in April 2018 and culminated with a performance in June 2018. In order to develop an understanding of the individual and collective processes involved, data were generated through autoethnography and journaling. These texts tracked our regular weekly rehearsals, any extra individual practice, and the performance experience. Seven journals were subsequently compiled and analyzed together with my autoethnography. The findings show that the bulk of the writings focused on technical questions like correctly executing the information contained in the score, with significantly fewer references to other aspects of musical interpretation, such as timbre, or personal reflections regarding our perception of the music and our journey in learning and performing the work. Furthermore, the texts reveal a hierarchical structure within the choir, especially related to perceived levels of musical literacy and/or institutionalized knowledge. In this article, I discuss the various experiences relating to the process of co-constructing a musical interpretation, together with the potential of journaling to develop reflexive, conscious, and inclusive processes of collective musical development within the context of a non-professional choir.

Finally at school: the return to classes of vulnerable pupils. Results of the FocuScuola Inclusion research 20.20

The research FocuScuola 20.20 – promoted by the Centre for Studies and Research on Disability and Marginality of Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore – aims at specifically understanding the state of the art of the inclusive processes at the return to school after the first lockdown period. This research is in line with the aims of national and international surveys that have analysed the challenges to which the school system has been called in this period of health and social emergency. The collected data show a picture that seems to confirm the critics linked to an ideological and reductive scenario. This view is although characterized by some positive elements in terms of reception and attention to students with greater vulnerability, but it is substantially distant from the realisation of educational pathways that assume educational differentiation as an authentic perspective and concrete working method. Quando tutto è ricominciato: il ritorno a scuola degli alunni più fragili. Esiti della ricerca FocuScuola Inclusione 20.20. La ricerca FocuScuola 20.20 – promossa dal Centro Studi e Ricerche sulla Disabilità e la Marginalità dell’Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore – ha inteso comprendere in modo specifico lo stato dell’arte dei processi inclusivi al rientro a scuola dopo il primo periodo di lockdown. Lo studio è in linea con le finalità di indagini nazionali e internazionali che hanno analizzato le sfide a cui il sistema scolastico è stato chiamato in questo periodo di emergenza sanitaria e sociale. I dati raccolti evidenziano un quadro che, seppur caratterizzato da alcuni elementi positivi sul piano dell’accoglienza e dell’attenzione verso gli alunni con maggiore vulnerabilità, sembra confermare le criticità legate ad una visione per molti aspetti ideologica e riduttiva, sostanzialmente lontana dalla realizzazione di percorsi educativi che assumano la differenziazione didattica come autentica prospettiva e concreta modalità di lavoro.

Work and disability during the Covid-19 outbreak: from the current scenario to possible future perspectives

Ensuring work for people with disabilities today represents an important goal for democratic states and a continuous challenge for policy makers who should always aim to improve targeted placement services. Unfortunately, this goal, although regulated by specific laws, does not always find fertile ground in its applicability, sometimes increasing marginalization and discrimination. In this regard, the Covid-19 outbreak has brought out new forms of exclusion and new needs, increasing, in some cases, inequalities within workplaces. Therefore, starting from the scenario outlined by the pandemic, the paper aims to propose a reflection on the importance of work for people with disabilities, as a tool of self-empowerment that promotes inclusive processes, analyzing the legislative framework regarding access to work for vulnerable people and outlining possible future perspectives to promote inclusion within work places. Lavoro e disabilità ai tempi del Covid-19: dallo scenario attuale a possibili prospettive future. Garantire una occupazione lavorativa alle persone con disabilità rappresenta oggi una conquista per gli Stati democratici e una continua sfida per i policy makers che dovrebbero sempre puntare a migliorare i servizi di collocamento mirato. Purtroppo, tale conquista, sebbene normata da leggi ad hoc, non sempre trova terreno fertile nella sua applicabilità, alimentando, talvolta, i fenomeni di emarginazione e i meccanismi di discriminazione. A tal proposito, l’emergenza sanitaria da Covid-19 ha fatto emergere nuove forme di esclusione e nuovi bisogni incrementando, in alcuni casi, le disparità in ambiente lavorativo. Dunque, partendo dallo scenario delineato dalla situazione pandemica, il contributo intende proporre una riflessione circa l’importanza del lavoro per le persone con disabilità, in quanto strumento di self-empowerment che favorisce i processi inclusivi, analizzando il quadro normativo in materia di diritto e di accesso al lavoro per i soggetti più fragili e tratteggiando possibili prospettive future per promuovere percorsi lavorativi inclusivi.

Rethinking school inclusion during and after the pandemic: some reflections

This contribution, of a theoretical nature, focuses on the complex educational situation that emerged immediately after the lockdown period and extended to this day. The authors, in fact, reflect on how the legislative restrictions, issued in favor of containing the spread of Covid-19, have significantly decreased the chances of building/maintaining significant relational bonds. This has consequently had a negative impact on the development of inclusive processes as well as on the learning level of many students, especially for the most vulnerable ones. For this reason, the authors try to question what prospects and what possibilities will open in the post-pandemic period, keeping in mind the unavoidable need to re-think the school, both from an organizational and an educational-didactic point of view. Ripensare l’inclusione scolastica durante e dopo la pandemia: alcuni spunti di riflessione. Il presente contributo, di carattere teorico, si focalizza sulla complessa situazione educativa delineatasi subito dopo il periodo del lockdown e prorogatasi finora. Le autrici, difatti, riflettono su come le restrizioni normative, emanate in favore della riduzione del contagio da Covid-19, abbiano sensibilmente diminuito le possibilità di costruire/mantenere legami relazionali significativi. Questo ha, conseguentemente, avuto un impatto negativo sullo sviluppo dei processi inclusivi nonché sul livello apprenditivo di numerosi alunni, soprattutto di quelli più vulnerabili. In ragione di ciò, le autrici provano a interrogarsi su quali prospettive e su quali possibilità si aprano nel periodo post-pandemia, avendo bene in mente l’ineludibile esigenza di ri-pensare la scuola, tanto dal punto di vista organizzativo quanto da quello educativo-didattico.

The potential role of pedagocial documentation in Italian early education during the Coronavirus pandemic

The practice of pedagogical documentation in the field of early childhood education and care in Italy has a long and significant tradition, starting in 1991 up to the most recent documents. The pandemic emergency and recent lockdowns in Italy are an invitation to focus attention on this theme for two main reasons: the documentation practice is indicated as functional to inclusive processes; the documenting practices of teachers and educators are changing. This paper discusses the results emerging from an explorative study carried out on the experience of distance education during the lockdown in Italy in in the context of 0-6 years early childhood education and care services collecting the opinion of 412 teachers, educators and coordinators through a questionnaire. In particular, the focus of this study will be on documentation practices through a descriptive analysis of closed answers and a content analysis of open questions. This allows to make the resilient beauty

Perception of Disability: Motricity-oriented education routes and inclusivity-based research perspectives

Many education scholars consider motricity aggregating and inclusive (Bertagna, 2005; Block & Vogler, 1994; Goodwin & Watkinson, 2000; Moliterni, 2013). It helps all students to develop specific motor and relational skills and non-special-needs students to manage special needs effectively (Slininger, Sherrill, & Jankowski, 2000). These positive aspects also have their impact on PE teachers according to their individual views of disability and special needs (Papadopoulou, Kokaridas, Papanikolaou, & Patsiasouras, 2004; Tripp & Rizzo, 2006). However, teacher attitude towards a special-needs student does influence day-to-day teaching and learning. The special-needs teacher's perception of disability is an important inclusivity factor that could make educational practice difficult, as class design needs constant adaptation and change. The paper presents an important educational experience at the University of Reggio Calabria, Italy, as we worked on our future special-needs teachers' perception and consequent management of inclusivity through motricity knowledge acquisition, with a view to designing and practicing more and more inclusive processes.

Urban Redevelopment Planning and Social Work Practice

Urban neighborhood disinvestment in the United States resulted in deferred maintenance of buildings and common social problems experienced by residents. Strategies to redevelop neighborhoods include collaboration among many subsystems seeking to collectively invest in places and people. Contemporary federal initiatives focus on incentivizing coordinated investments between existing local community-based organizations, local and federal government, and private investors. Public–private partnerships include anchor institutions with commitments to the long-term success of place-based initiatives who invest their financial, intellectual, social, and political capital. Social workers are embedded in local community-based organizations and relationships with residents in neighborhoods experiencing redevelopment. Social workers can help guide top-down and bottom-up approaches to neighborhood revitalization toward more equitable and inclusive processes and outcomes. Resident engagement in redeveloping neighborhoods takes many forms and requires differing skill sets for social workers. Urban redevelopment is a global trend with common critiques regarding relying on gentrification and market-driven strategies with private investors.

Technology-Based Decision Making in Inclusive Education

Technology-based decisions in education are made on a daily basis. For some students, inclusive education is impossible without assistive and adaptive technologies. A study was conducted using the method “focus groups with one moderator”. The discussions explore the decision-making process for technology-based learning and the advantages and disadvantages of technology-based learning. The method provides an opportunity for individual and group intellectual and praxeological reflection on the discussed issues. The reflexive processes in the respondents allow to deduce the levels of their digital competence. The qualitative research was conducted with 65 inclusive teachers from secondary school and high school. The teachers participating in the study were selected according to a basic criterion: to make technology-based decisions for the implementation of inclusive processes in school. The main aspects for future analysis are mobility, accessibility, functionalities of technologies, application of the model of technology-based learning in inclusive education and factors that influence the decision-making process for choosing different spaces of technology-based learning. By making technology-based decisions the respondents create conditions for self-reflection about the application of technologies for the implementation of the processes of inclusive education. Reflexive analysis for technology-based decisions leads to increased intellectual, personal and praxeological reflection in the respondents. As a consequence of the increased manifestations of reflection in the respondents, conditions are created for personalized teaching and personalized learning in students, and personalized learning in turn paves the path of inclusive processes.

A new approach to semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering with QED and QCD factorization

We present the details of a new factorized approach to semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering which treats QED and QCD radiation on equal footing, and provides a systematically improvable approximation to the extraction of transverse momentum dependent parton distributions. We demonstrate how the QED contributions can be well approximated by collinear factorization, and illustrate the application of the factorized approach to QED radiation in inclusive scattering. For semi-inclusive processes, we show how radiation effects prevent a well-defined “photon-nucleon” frame, forcing one to use a two-step process to account for the radiation. We illustrate the utility of the new method by explicit application to the spin-dependent Sivers and Collins asymmetries.