Department of Human and Social Sciences

The pedagogical potential and social effects associated with the formative assessment have long been taken into account by UNESCO and the Council of Europe in their policy directions including in education and training. Paradigmatic examples of this orientation are Goal No. 4 of the UNESCO 2030 Agenda (Provide quality, equitable and inclusive education and learning opportunities for all) and the design and implementation of the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture by the Council of Europe. The underlying goal that these bodies aim to pursue is social promotion and support for increasing democratization of society as a whole. During the first phase of the uncontrolled spread of the Sars-Cov-2 virus, in the period of spring 2020, the National School and Training Systems decided on the closure of institutes and the sudden switch to distance learning as measures to counter the contagions and not to completely interrupt teaching and training activities (e. g. in Italy: DPCM March 4, 2020, Art. 1, paragraph 1(g); Departmental Note March 17, 2020, No. 388; DL March 25, 2020, No. 19, Art. 1, paragraph 2(p); DL April 8, 2020, No. 22, converted, with amendments, by L. June 6, 2020, No. 41, Art. 2, paragraph 3; DL May 19, 2020, No. 34; DM June 26, 2020, No. 39; DM August 7, 2020, No. 89). Each school system has organized itself to meet the needs of its teachers, pupils, and families. In most cases, National School Systems have adopted distance education through e-learning or video conferencing platforms (UNESCO, 2020a, 2020b). In this context and in accordance with the path outlined above, UNESCO and the Council of Europe saw fit to encourage the use of assessment in its formative function within distance school activities. The main purpose was to support students' engagement and thus their learning journey (Engzell, Frey, Verhagen, 2020; Huges, 2020). Beyond the generalized and unanticipated use of formative assessment, the assumption of the latter in a systematic way in the functioning of school systems postulates a set of innovative actions on a large scale, among which it is sufficient to mention, by way of example, the appropriate pedagogical, didactic and docimological training of all teachers as well as the organizational arrangement of school work (Hattie, 2016). This paper is intended to give an account of the design of a research facility aimed at detecting whether and how teachers used formative assessment during the period of ERT, in order to specify the training needs and the main needs at the level of school work organization.

Alcune ricerche considerano la valutazione formativa strumento utile a favorire il coinvolgimento degli studenti, soprattutto nella didattica online. Uno studio di Z. Chen, J. Jiao e K. Hu (2021), svolto nel periodo pandemico per Covid-19, rileva che studenti e insegnanti separati temporalmente e spazialmente sono soggetti a criticità a lungo termine tipiche dell’istruzione a distanza tra cui, a titolo di esempio, la disumanizzazione dei rapporti.
In tale contesto è opportuno riprendere la distinzione postulata da Hodges, Charles et al. (2020) tra la didattica a distanza online (Distance Learning – DL) e l’insegnamento a distanza di emergenza (Emergency Remote Teaching - ERT). Contrariamente alle esperienze didattiche progettate per essere online, l’ERT è una modalità temporanea e alternativa di erogazione dell'istruzione a causa di circostanze di crisi. Essa implica l'uso di strategie di insegnamento completamente a distanza; l'istruzione, che altrimenti verrebbe erogata faccia a faccia o come insegnamento misto o ibrido, tornerà al formato tradizionale quando l'emergenza sarà rientrata. In queste circostanze, l'obiettivo principale non è ricreare un solido ecosistema educativo ma, piuttosto, fornire un accesso temporaneo all'istruzione e ai supporti didattici, prevenendo anche possibili rischi di disimpegno e disumanizzazione tipici delle situazioni emergenziali.
Le ricerche mostrano che gli studenti si sentono isolati nell’istruzione online (Hammond, 2009), con conseguente alto tasso di abbandono scolastico (Hodges & Kim, 2010), alto tasso di noia e scarso rendimento (Fredricks, 2015). Secondo Chen, Jiao e Hu l’impiego della valutazione formativa in tali contesti può essere soluzione efficace. Implementata con compiti di discussione su forum, quiz e test, essa si è dimostrata efficace nel migliorare l'impegno e nell’incrementare l’apprendimento. Gli studi menzionati fanno riferimento esplicito a una modalità di insegnamento mista tra online e presenza, nello specifico riguardano la DL. Secondo gli autori vi sono limitate evidenze che ciò funzioni anche nella modalità tipica dell’ERT.
A partire dalla letteratura selezionata, il presente contributo intende dare conto dei primi risultati emersi da una rilevazione empirica circa le convinzioni e le dichiarazioni di prassi dei docenti sulla valutazione formativa in un contesto di ERT. Tale ricerca è volta a comprendere ciò che i docenti di alcuni istituti omnicomprensivi lombardi pensano rispetto a questi temi e ciò che hanno messo in pratica per sostenere l’apprendimento e prevenire il disimpegno degli studenti. Il focus di questa ricerca, nei limiti dello studio di caso, potrebbe aprire prospettive di cambiamento per la professionalità dei docenti degli istituti coinvolti.

he focus of the paper is an observational-descriptive study of three omnicomprehensive schools in the Lombardy Region. It examines: the context in which teachers worked during the COVID-19 pandemic, their beliefs and practices regarding formative assessment, student learning and engagement during ERT, and the links between these and the context. The study suggests that there is a belief among teachers that formative assessment can support student learning and engagement in what is perceived to be an emergency context. The data collected indicate a positive correlation between beliefs and practices. There is also a significant effect of the school context on the development of the latter.

(Il contributo verte su un'indagine osservativo-descrittiva su tre istituti omnicomprensivi della Regione Lombardia avente per oggetti: il contesto in cui gli insegnanti hanno operato durante il Covid-19, le loro convinzioni e dichiarazioni di prassi sulla valutazione formativa, l'apprendimento e il coinvolgimento degli studenti durante l'ERT, i legami tra quelle e il contesto. L'indagine suggerisce che gli insegnanti sono convinti che la valutazione formativa possa sostenere l'apprendimento e l'impegno degli studenti in un contesto considerato emergenziale. Dai dati raccolti emerge una correlazione positiva tra convinzioni e pratiche e un effetto significativo del contesto scolastico sulla costruzione di queste ultime).

The contribution presents a multiple case study of three all-inclusive schools in Lombardy aimed at observing and describing their context, teachers' beliefs, and practice statements about formative assessment, learning, and student engagement in the Emergency Remote Teaching activated during the critical period of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the relationship between them and the context. Specifically, the qualitative-quantitative analyses carried out on the results emerging from the semi-structured interviews conducted with Headmasters, document analysis (the three-year plan of educational offerings, self-evaluation report, circulars, policy acts etc.), the questionnaire submitted to teachers, and focus groups conducted with the HM, the internal evaluation team and selected teachers by school order will be presented. The case study is part of a larger research project of which hints will be provided in the presentation.

This paper presents some results of a research conducted during the pandemic period on a sample of 193 teachers from three Italian omnicomprehensive schools (from primary to upper secondary school). The purpose was to investigate teachers' implicit beliefs and their practices about formative assessment during emergency remote teaching (ERT). The data collected and the subsequent reflections showed that, in this kind of situation, models of teacher training are fundamental. In the three cases described the lesson learned is that the real way to prepare a good teacher for a good school is to substantiate the ordinary work and deeply consider teachers' beliefs to design effective training courses.

Big collaborative projects are today common in social sciences. These projects imply the collection of large data stored and shared by collaborators and with funders. As increasingly discussed by anthropologists, sociologists and other social scientists, however, large collaborative projects, especially when they are based on ethnographic research, entail specific ethical challenges. While funders increasingly expect scholars to share their data to insure transparency and accountability, the nature of qualitative data collected on the basis of trust relationship between researcher and respondent makes sharing and archiving a problematic issue. This article aims to address these issues by drawing from the experiences of the 7 researchers involved in the HOMING project, an investigation of the nexus between home and migration. In particular, we discuss three issues which concern ethnographic and qualitative collective research projects: data collection (the role of serendipity and tru...

In a world of rampant inequality, when millions seek out better futures elsewhere, this introduction situates critical experiences of dwelling within recent debates on home and migration. Seeing vulnerability as an active condition, this theme section records the attempts of individuals and groups on the move in fashioning a home despite adverse socio-cultural, economical, and political situations. Our argumentation considers: the imbrication of structural forces and existential power, the complexity of temporal registers across the life course, and the human capacity for home-making. As asylum-seekers, evicted refugees and deprived migrant families struggle to feel at home in precarious circumstances, our ethnographies reveal the violence inflicted by social systems but also the agency of subjects who strive to make the places they inhabit everyday worth living.

The dowry system originated in South Asia and the new patterns of household formation among Indian migrant minorities have been debated in the international literature, particularly in the UK. However, less attention has been paid to the pre-marital bargaining strategies used in the most recent Punjabi immigration to Italy (to date the largest Indian Diaspora in Europe) and to how a certain idea of kinship and a cultural code of spousal/parental relations are enacted through gift, exchange and favor. This article explores the “marriage market” among youth of Punjabi descent in Italy (between first and second immigrant generations), investigating the bride-groom selection procedures and the economic transactions which endorse a wedding agreement. Reports of ethnographic research just concluded in the northern rural districts of Bergamo and Brescia indicate that dissonant subjective narratives give voice to family and community conflicts across genders and ages in setting up new domes...

While India is known for its enduring caste system and mounting racist attitudes, its diasporas resettled in Western countries are enmeshed in other (anti)racist discourses and practices. Seeing racialization as a process of translation, which is rampant in transnational migrations, this paper considers the racial experiences of Punjabis in northern Italy: a dense immigrant area, haunted by its colonial past, ongoing internal racism and current southern European rightist xenophobia. With a historical gaze, and based on my multisite research conducted between India and Italy in 2012-2014, I address everyday racial dynamics crossing geopolitical borders and other social boundaries (gender, ethnicity, class and religion). Ethnographic work with Italian Punjabis reveals a knot of racialized/racializing relations enacted in a super-diverse milieu: within and between the immigrant communities and the host society. Despite multicultural rhetoric, besides a demotion of African Blacks under a certain white European governance, South Asians embody, perform and resist the ambivalent nuance of "Brownie" shifting on a volatile color line, as they ironically dramatized in a youth educational project. Delegitimized race, grasping the transnationality of mundane racialization, is a step towards targeting the resilience of racism(s) in a world going plural yet nevertheless unequal.

Italia, l’articolo discute di matrimoni transnazionali e ricongiungimenti familiari in una diaspora Sikh, intrecciando immaginari culturali, normative istituzionali ed affetti domestici. Si considera lo scarto tra l’esperienza di una madre e della figlia (l’una emigrante indiana pioniera, l’altra quasi italiana di seconda generazione) nell’appellarsi a reti parentali e opportunita migratorie per far fronte a persecuzione politica, ristrettezze economiche e limitazioni di liberta personale. La storia di famiglia che queste donne interpretano rivela aspirazioni e (im)mobilita dove s’intessono genere ed eta, snodandosi attraverso tempi e luoghi in via di trasformazione epocale. Nel saggio, l’etnografa riflette sulla metodologia che ha guidato l’analisi del materiale raccolto: il continuo rimando a spezzoni biografici resi dalle sue informatrici nell’arco di anni, passando dalla condivisione di immaginari domestici, alle confidenze di chi ha messo in moto le proprie intimita.

Drawing from my research on Panjabi diasporas in Lombardy, I discuss the media hype which followed the accidental murder of an Italian lady doctor occurred in Bergamo in 2013, during a brawl among Panjabi family clans. An embittered xenophobic and racist imagination tainted the local public opinion, replacing the typecast of Indians as mild laborers with ruthless criminals, enmeshed in feuds of southern Italian memory. Through ethnographic narratives and local chronicles, I contrast the stakes of immigrants and natives, citizens and officials, unraveling how the identity outcomes of that drama affected social interactions and integration of the Panjabi communities long established in the area.

Within transnational labor, the working capital of migrants may recoil as aging and disability occur, crushing people’s everyday life and aspirations. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork with Indo-Pakistani minorities in Brescia, northern Italy, the author queries “a case for affliction,” seeing the experience of a breadwinner’s stroke disrupting his household. While for decades Punjabi diasporas have settled abroad remitting to the homeland, social attainment oft en remains precarious for first-time movers and their off spring. Aft er 20-year residence in a destination country, a migrant father’s collapse rebounds on his kindred, who regrettably turn to local welfare and public housing but also readjust personal desires toward sustainable family care. Intersectional analysis abets the participants’ narratives in challenging any set “sense of inequality,” embodied, and embedded in run-of-the-mill racialized capitalism.

Background. Coronary artery disease (CAD) is a complex, multifactorial disease in which personality seems to play a role but with no definition in combination with other risk factors. Objective. To explore the nonlinear and simultaneous pathways between traditional and personality traits risk factors and coronary stenosis by Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) data mining analysis. Method. Seventy-five subjects were examined for traditional cardiac risk factors and personality traits. Analyses were based on a new data mining method using a particular artificial adaptive system, the autocontractive map (AutoCM). Results. Several traditional Cardiovascular Risk Factors (CRF) present significant relations with coronary artery plaque (CAP) presence or severity. Moreover, anger turns out to be the main factor of personality for CAP in connection with numbers of traditional risk factors. Hidden connection map showed that anger, hostility, and the Type D personality subscale social inhibition...

DALLE GRAVE, RICCARDO, SIMONA CALUGI, ENRICO MOLINARI, MARIA LETIZIA PETRONI, MARIO BONDI, ANGELO COMPARE, GIULIO MARCHESINI, AND THE QUOVADIS STUDY GROUP. Weight loss expectations in obese patients and treatment attrition: an observational multicenter study. Obes Res. 2005;13:1961-1969 Objective: To investigate the influence of weight loss expectations (expected 1-year BMI loss, dream and maximum acceptable BMI) on attrition in obese patients seeking treatment. Research Methods and Procedures: Obese subjects (1785; 1393 women; median age, 46 years; median BMI, 36.7 kg/m 2 ) seeking treatment in 23 medical Italian centers were evaluated. Baseline diet and weight history, weight loss expectations, and primary motivation for seeking treatment (health or improving appearance) were systematically recorded. Psychiatric distress, binge eating, and body image dissatisfaction were tested at baseline by self-administered questionnaires (Symptom Check List-90, Binge Eating Scale, and Body Uneasiness Test). Attrition and BMI change at 12 months were prospectively recorded. Results: At 12 months, 923 of 1785 patients (51.7%) had discontinued treatment. Compared with continuers, dropouts had a significantly lower age, a lower age at first dieting, lower dream BMI, a higher expected 1-year BMI loss, and a higher weight phobia. At logistic regression analysis, the strongest predictors of attrition at 12 months were lower age and higher expected 1-year BMI loss. The risk of drop-out increased systematically for unit increase in expected BMI loss at 12 months (hazard ratio, 1.12; 95% confidence interval, 1.04 to 1.20; p ϭ 0.0018). The risk was particularly elevated in the first 6 months. Discussion: Baseline weight loss expectations are independent cognitive predictors of attrition in obese patients entering a weight-losing program; the higher the expectations, the higher attrition at 12 months. Unrealistic weight goals should be tackled at the very beginning of treatment.

Objective: To test the effect on psychopathology and quality of life of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), Dietary Counseling (DC), and Combined Treatment (CT) in treatment-seeking patients with Binge Eating Disorder (BED) and obesity. Methods: Utilizing an observational study design, 189 obese adult patients with BED were treated by manualized therapy protocols. An independent assessment of health-related quality of life (Obesity-Related Well-Being questionnaire -ORWELL-97), attitudes toward eating (Eating Inventory -EI), binge eating (Binge Eating Scale -BES) and body uneasiness (Body Uneasiness Test -BUT) was performed at baseline, end-of-treatment, and six-month follow-up. These data are the secondary outcomes of a previously published treatment study. Results: A higher dropout rate was observed in the DC compared to the EFT and CT groups, while body weight decreased significantly in all three groups. Pre-post scores on the BES, BUT Global Severity Index, and EI Hunger subscale significantly decreased in the CT and EFT groups (but not the DC group). At six-month follow-up, 71% of participants in CT and 46% of participants in EFT had a BES score below the threshold of attention for BED (616), whereas no participants in the DC group reached this target. Finally the ORWELL-97 score decreased significantly in all groups, but significantly more so in the CT and EFT groups. Conclusion: Results support the utility of combining EFT and DC in the treatment of patients with BED and obesity, emphasizing the usefulness of techniques focused on cognitive emotional processing for changing eating disorder psychopathology and quality of life.

OBJECTIVE: To compare clinical characteristics, attrition, weight loss, and psychological changes of obese young adults and obese adults seeking treatment. MATERIALS AND METHODS: 1530 individuals seeking treatment in 18 Italian medical centers were evaluated. 382 cases (25%) were classified as young adults (age≤35 years), 1148 (75%) as adults (>35 years). Psychological distress, binge eating, body uneasiness, and attitude towards eating were evaluated, at baseline and after a 12-month weight-loss program, together with BMI changes. Weight-loss expectations and primary motivation for seeking treatment were also recorded. RESULTS: At baseline, young adults reported significantly higher BMI at age 20, weight loss expectations and body uneasiness scores than adults. A significantly higher percentage of young adults also reported improving appearance as primary reason for seeking treatment. The attrition rate was significantly larger in young adults. Among completers, the mean percent weight loss at 12 months and improvement of psychosocial variables were significantly higher in young adults than in adults. By intention to treat, BMI changes were no longer significant between groups. DISCUSSION: Obese young adults lose more weight and considerably improve psychological distress, but show a higher attrition rate after 12 months of continuous care in a real world medical setting. (Eat. Weight Disord. 17: e314-e319, 2012). © 2012, Editrice Kurtis © 2 0 1 2 , E d i t r i c e K u r t i s F O R P E R S O N A L U S E O N L Y e318

Binge eating disorder (BED) is a complex and multifaceted eating disorder, and the literature indicates that BED patients show greater difficulty in identifying and making sense of emotional states, and that they have limited access to emotion regulation strategies. Findings show many links between mindfulness and emotional regulation, however there has been no previous research on mindfulness traits in BED patients. One hundred fifty BED patients (N=150: women=98, men=52; age 49.3±4.1) were matched for gender, age, marital status and educational level with 150 non-bingeing obese and 150 normal-weight subjects. All were assessed with the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), Binge Eating Scale (BES), Objective bulimic episodes (EDE-OBEs) and Body Uneasiness Test (BUT). For all the participants past or current meditation experience was an exclusion criteria. Findings showed that Mindfulness-global, Non reactivity to experience, Acting with awareness, Describing with words and ...