Benessere e clima scolastico nelle scuole primarie del Veneto: La voce degli insegnanti

The TALIS international survey on teaching and learning has been collecting teachers' attitudes, opinions, and representations about schoolwork experience, school, and working conditions since 2008. This article presents a survey involving 611 primary school teachers from the Veneto region (Italy), which aimed to investigate teachers' perceptions of school climate and well-being at the end of the 2020/2021 school year. The research used some parts of the tool used in TALIS to investigate whether most teachers work in contexts with a positive professional climate. The results show a high perception of work-related stress, which could interfere with classroom teaching and confirm factors related to a positive school climate, including mutual respect for colleagues' ideas and the possibility of open discussions.L’indagine internazionale TALIS sull’insegnamento e apprendimento rileva dal 2008 atteggiamenti, opinioni e rappresentazioni degli insegnanti sull’esperienza lavorativa scolastica, sulla scuola e sulle condizioni lavorative. L’articolo presenta una ricerca che ha coinvolto 611 insegnanti di scuola primaria statale del Veneto e che ha avuto lo scopo di indagare la percezione dei docenti rispetto al clima e al benessere scolastico alla fine dell’anno scolastico 2020/2021. La ricerca ha utilizzato alcune parti dello strumento utilizzato in TALIS per indagare se la gran parte degli insegnanti lavori in contesti dal clima professionale positivo. I risultati denotano un’elevata percezione del livello di stresso lavoro-correlato, che potrebbe interferire con la didattica in classe, e confermano i fattori correlati alla presenza nelle scuole di un clima positivo, tra cui il rispetto reciproco per le idee dei colleghi e la possibilità di confrontarsi apertamente

Resting-state functional connectivity changes between dentate nucleus and cortical social brain regions in autism spectrum disorders

Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are known to be characterized by restricted and repetitive behaviors and interests and by impairments in social communication and interactions mainly including "theory of mind" (ToM) processes. The cerebellum has emerged as one of the brain regions affected by ASDs. As the cerebellum is known to influence cerebral cortex activity via cerebello-thalamo-cortical (CTC) circuits, it has been proposed that cerebello-cortical "disconnection" could in part underlie autistic symptoms. We used resting-state (RS) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the potential RS connectivity changes between the cerebellar dentate nucleus (DN) and the CTC circuit targets, that may contribute to ASD pathophysiology. When comparing ASD patients to controls, we found decreased connectivity between the left DN and cerebral regions known to be components of the ToM network and the default mode network, implicated in specific aspects of mentalizing, social cognition processing, and higher order emotional processes. Further, a pattern of overconnectivity was also detected between the left DN and the supramodal cerebellar lobules associated with the default mode network. The presented RS-fMRI data provide evidence that functional connectivity (FC) between the dentate nucleus and the cerebral cortex is altered in ASD patients. This suggests that the dysfunction reported within the cerebral cortical network, typically related to social features of ASDs, may be at least partially related to an impaired interaction between cerebellum and key cortical social brain regions