Teacher training paths between neuroeducation and professional learning community

This paper starts from the belief that a school capable of feeling and making community is regarded as a privileged context to promote both organizational and relational well-being. Teacher training is possible in the intersection between the concepts of Neuroeducation and learning community. Moreover, the concept of "school-as-a-community" interacts with that of "peer learning", which is configured as a methodology capable of simultaneously promoting the ability of realization of the individual and of the organization. From a methodological point of view, this work documents a research project carried out with a group of 69 teachers of the first cycle of education. Moving from the problems and questions arising around their conception of school as a learning organization and their perception of the teaching relationship in neuroeducational terms, the project has been articulated into two phases. In the first one, we coped with the analysis, reflection, problematization and confrontation on the teaching profession, on the deep significance of the teaching acts and on any possible discrepancy between what is planned and what is actually achieved in practice. In the second phase, we tutored and mentored teachers in the study of the dynamics of the educational relationship in terms learning strategies, neuro-behaviors and paying particular attention to those cognitive-somatic markers implemented in teaching/learning practice. The work highlights those aspects connected to the processes of cooperative learning among teachers, considered as systematic processes of review and revision of the practices put in place by a professional community, as well as some elements of Neuroeducation which are functional to a wider knowledge of the tools and strategies available to teachers for the implementation of their teaching relationships

Digital Competence for the improvement of Special Education Teaching

The increasing digitization and globalization of the media, the broad diversification of media products, with the value-and ethical issues that it raises, proposes and confirms the reasons why media education is to be considered as an indispensable task for anyone involved in education. Thanks to specific educational interventions and appropriate evaluation tools for self-assessment, future educators should be helped to acquire the appropriate media skills necessary to develop the capacity to responsibly and autonomously choose proper media to design their media education courses. The media competence enhances teachers’ ability to creatively modify learning spaces and to design a variety of stimulating activities in order to promote their pupils’ independent and aware work. This paper describes the research for the development of three digital skills, in the Academic Year 2014/2015 with 91 in service teachers attending their special education teaching qualification course at the University of Palermo

Orientamenti nella formazione docente per l’inclusione

Dinanzi alle sfide inclusive che la scuola oggi pone, legate al bisogno di comunità, inclusione, rispetto della diversità, si registra la necessità di accrescere una cultura dell’autovalutazione negli insegnanti, onde generare consapevolezza e programmare piani di miglioramento della didattica. Sin dalla formazione iniziale, è opportuno misurare e monitorare un costrutto complesso come quello dell’inclusione, affinché gli insegnanti sviluppino riflessività e consapevolezza e comprendano meglio il contesto socio-culturale in cui agiscono, nonché gli effetti della loro azione sugli alunni. In tale prospettiva, è stata condotta una rilevazione delle percezioni sull’agire inclusivo su un campione di 443 insegnanti di sostegno in servizio sul territorio scolastico siciliano. Rilevazione e monitoraggio, condotti mediante l’utilizzo del QRQISI (Questionario di rilevazione della qualità inclusiva della scuola e delle competenze dell’insegnante) sono stati finalizzati alla promozione di una assunzione di responsabilità da parte degli insegnanti di sostegno, nella convinzione che solo in questo modo sia possibile attivare interventi tempestivi ed efficaci per favorire il processo di apprendimento e il riconoscimento delle esigenze educative di ogni alunno. Di fatto, l’elaborazione dei primi dati dell’indagine e, in particolare, la correlazione r di Pearson hanno messo in rilievo un orientamento sempre più efficace, da parte dei docenti, verso un processo di inclusione reale e, parimenti, lo sforzo significativo delle scuole siciliane coinvolte nell’individuare le linee strategiche per incrementare la qualità dell'inclusione. Il presente lavoro è frutto di un percorso di ricerca realizzato grazie al finanziamento di una borsa del Dipartimento di Scienze Psicologiche, Pedagogiche, dell'Esercizio Fisico e della Formazione, dell’Università di Palermo, dal titolo “Best practices and tools of analysis in schools and community contexts: learning, teaching & inclusion” avviato nel Marzo 2019 e del quale qui si resoconta la fase iniziale di rilevazione dei primi dati.Considering the inclusive challenges school requires today, connected to the need for community, inclusion, respect for diversity, it is necessary to increase a culture of self-evaluation in teachers. From the very beginning of initial training, it is necessary to measure and monitor a complex construct such as that of ‘inclusion’, so that teachers develop reflexivity, awareness and better understand the socio-cultural context, and the effects they produce in pupils. In this perspective, a survey of perceptions on inclusive action was conducted on a sample of 443 in service support teachers working in Sicily conducted through the use of QRQISI (Italian acronym for ‘Questionnaire for the detection of the inclusive quality of the school and the teacher's skills’). The elaboration of the first survey dat a highl ighted the teachers' increasingly effective orientation towards inclusion and, likewise, the effort of the Sicilian schools in identifying strategic lines to increase the quality of inclusion. This work is the result of the research "Best practices and tools of analysis in schools and community contexts: learning teaching & inclusion", started in March 2019 and funded by the Department of Psychological,Pedagogical Sciences, Physical Exercise and Training, of the University of Palermo, and of which the initial data collection phase is reported here

Apprendimenti linguistici situati: uno studio su Didattica generale e Didattica delle lingue a confronto

Language teaching bases its theoretical and methodological framework on an axiom: object and teaching tool coincide in the target language. There follows that active learning is the key to efficacious linguistic knowledge as well as to transferable learning from a specific disciplinary context to a general one. This perspective is in tune with the educational claims and the learning aims fixed by the EAS teaching model, according to which learning is mediated by action and by the learner’s ability to simulate real life situations within classroomThe present study means to start up an epistemological reflection moving from the comparison between language teaching and general teaching with regard to the recent EAS methodology detected in Communicative Approach and its correlated language teaching methods, having a special look at the CLIL methodology.La glottodidattica fonda il proprio impianto teorico e metodologico su un assioma: oggetto e strumento didattico coincidono nella lingua target. Ne consegue che l’active learning sia la chiave applicativa dei saperi linguistici con una efficacia in termini apprenditivi che sembra possa essere un principiotrasferibile dal contesto educativo specifico al contesto educativo generale.Questa prospettiva risponde alle esigenze educative e ai traguardi posti da un modello didattico quale quello degli EAS (Rivoltella, 2013), secondo cui l’apprendimento è mediato dall’azione e dalla capacità dell’apprendente di simulare in classe “situazioni di vita reale”.Il contributo vuole aprire una pista di riflessione epistemologica a partire dalla comparazione tra glottodidattica e didattica generale in ordine alla recente metodologia degli EAS, ravvisabili nelle metodologie glottodidattiche innestate nell’Approccio Comunicativo, con particolare riguardo al CLIL

De Novo Donor-Specific HLA Antibodies Developing Early or Late after Transplant Are Associated with the Same Risk of Graft Damage and Loss in Nonsensitized Kidney Recipients

De novo posttransplant donor-specific HLA-antibody (dnDSA) detection is now recognized as a tool to identify patients at risk for antibody-mediated rejection (AMR) and graft loss. It is still unclear whether the time interval from transplant to DSA occurrence influences graft damage. Utilizing sera collected longitudinally, we evaluated 114 consecutive primary pediatric kidney recipients grafted between 2002 and 2013 for dnDSA occurrence by Luminex platform. dnDSAs occurred in 39 patients at a median time of 24.6 months. In 15 patients, dnDSAs developed within 1 year (early-onset group), while the other 24 seroconverted after the first posttransplant year (late-onset group). The two groups were comparable when considering patient- and transplant-related factors, as well as DSA biological properties, including C1q and C3d complement-binding ability. Only recipient age at transplant significantly differed in the two cohorts, with younger patients showing earlier dnDSA development. Late AMR was diagnosed in 47% of the early group and in 58% of the late group. Graft loss occurred in 3/15 (20%) and 4/24 (17%) patients in early- and late-onset groups, respectively (p = ns). In our pediatric kidney recipients, dnDSAs predict AMR and graft loss irrespective of the time elapsed between transplantation and antibody occurrence

Frequently asked questions regarding SARS-CoV-2 in cancer patients—recommendations for clinicians caring for patients with malignant diseases

Since early 2020, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has a massive impact on health care systems worldwide. Patients with malignant diseases are assumed to be at increased risk for a worse outcome of SARS-CoV-2 infection, and therefore, guidance regarding prevention and management of the infection as well as safe administration of cancer-therapy is required. Here, we provide recommendations for the management of patients with malignant disease in the times of COVID-19. These recommendations were prepared by an international panel of experts and then consented by the EHA Scientific Working Group on Infection in Hematology. The primary aim is to enable clinicians to provide optimal cancer care as safely as possible, since the most important protection for patients with malignant disease is the best-possible control of the underlying disease.Open access funding provided by Projekt DEA

Situated Language Learning Methods: a cross-sectional study on General Teaching and Language teaching

Language teaching bases its theoretical and methodological framework on an axiom: object and teaching tool coincide in the target language. There follows that active learning is the key to efficacious linguistic knowledge as well as to transferable learning from a specific disciplinary context to a general one. This perspective is in tune with the educational claims and the learning aims fixed by the EAS teaching model, according to which learning is mediated by action and by the learner’s ability to simulate real life situations within classroom The present study means to start up an epistemological reflection moving from the comparison between language teaching and general teaching with regard to the recent EAS methodology detected in Communicative Approach and its correlated language teaching methods, having a special look at the CLIL methodology

Flipped Language teaching. Lingua, comunicazione, apprendimento

The volume intends to offer a contribution to language teaching research starting from the issues related to the teaching / learning of foreign languages ​​at school. From an examination of the cultural and regulatory context of reference, from the need to find a correspondence between the linguistic objectives defined by national policies and the European recommendations in the field of language education, from the definition of the concept of 'linguistic competence' as outlined by the CEFR, an operational proposal is articulated focused on the methodology of Flipped teaching aimed at promoting the use and transmission of the LS, through precise lines of language teaching planning. All the work phases, necessary for the structuring of an educational path that can facilitate the teacher to manage interactive language lessons, which can be practiced effectively, through the use of ICT. are detailed. The volume is therefore configured as a theoretical and operational reflection on the need / opportunity to see the language class, more than any other, as a learning environment suitable for teaching mediated by technologies and with the intention of looking at the methodology of Flipped Teaching as a possible response to requests for renewal and strengthening of the language teaching / learning process of Foreign Languages ​​based on the development of communicative competence