Cognition, knowledge, understanding, participation: student\u27s cognitive levels

Not availableDisponibile anche nella versione italiana con il titolo: Conoscere, sapere, comprendere, partecipare: i livelli conoscitivi degli studenti

Research and Inhabited Image (RIA): a spatial hypothesis

This paper discusses the possibility of representing research activity as a narrative path starting from an experimentation field. The aim is to test and verify connections between social space and the construction of images of the world through the building and perception of specific language in the narrative dimension of research. The field work we present has been carried out as an installation art in Borromini’s Crypt in Rome, and is the example of rendering the story-dimension of research through a medium, a narrative technology in constant progress and evolution. In this way research activity can be presented as ascent and descent, as a mix of light and darkness, in multiple symbolic ways and different values. The Research and Inhabited Image Project (RIA) is in this dimension conceived as a story of stories, not as a research communication work

The reasons of scientists mobility: results from the comparison of outgoing and ingoing fluxes of researchers in Italy

IRPPS/CNR finalised, in 2001, a questionnaire designed to mine information about foreigners engaged in research in Italy. We found that the numerical presence of foreign researchers was not proportionately negligible with respect to the total number of researchers in Italian public research institutes. This survey therefore demonstrates that Italian research institutes were securely connected to the international circuit of scientists and allowed us to recognize some of the main reasons of these peculiar migrations. However, the intake of foreign researchers in Italy is far lower than the outflow of Italian researchers abroad, though the dimension of the last flux is extremely hard to be determined, since no reliable statistical records are collected on this topic. Because of this reason, we recently started a new survey dedicated to the Italian researchers working abroad. Being their total number unknown, we are using the "snowball sampling” method in order to reach the highest number of subjects. The starting sample was taken from the DAVINCI data-base, available on the web site of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and composed by data voluntarily inserted by about 2000 Italian researchers working abroad. All the registered scientists were asked by e-mail to fulfil a questionnaire, basically equal to the one used for the previous survey on the foreign researchers working in Italy. Though this research is just started, its preliminary results seem to confirm the findings of the previous one concerning the reasons of what we might call the "natural mobility” of researchers: when scientists move abroad, they are generally motivated by a desire to engage in quality work, whereas other considerations that are very important to other professionals, such as economic compensation, are less important. By the way, our surveys also revealed a basic difference between the outgoing and ingoing fluxes of researchers in Italy: while the large majority of foreign scientists working in Italy plan to come back home, the largest share of the interviewees Italian researchers working abroad do not will to do the same. In both cases, the chief reasons for the scientist’s reluctance to settle in Italy can be ascribed to the unlikelihood of permanent contracts of employment and the poor prospects for career advancement in Italian public research institutes, universities and companies. This unfortunate situation, jeopardizing the Italian capability to compete in the present day knowledge based economy, is also confirmed by the results that we gathered from the analysis of the subsamples of Italian graduates working abroad from the 2007 yearly AlmaLaurea Survey on Italian Graduates’ Employment Conditions.

GENERA Project: Research organizations and gender

This report has been produced during the three years activity of the H2020 GENERA project as a deliverable of the Italian working group coordinated by CNR. The report addresses the analysis of the present status of activities towards gender equality in physics research in the project partner organisations and the conceptualization of the Gender-in-Physics Days to be organized by Partners. In particular the setting up of a common framework for collecting gender relevant data at organizational level, the hindering and facilitating factors in the collection of relevant data, the analyses and reflections on the different experiences made by GENERA partners in accessing the available data. Suggestions on positive actions to improve the gender relevant data monitoring activities, are of the utmost importance to shape a future monitoring system stemming from GENERA experience and applicable to other European research organizations

Raising awareness on gender issues: A path through physics, outreach and diversity.

When and where it is convenient to start working on raising awareness on gender issues? Our answer is that high school is definitely a good start, mainly if we think that outreach activities can have a role in the transition to an environment for learning, teaching and researching in physics that is equally attractive and supportive to all genders, at each stage of their education and career path. As researchers of INFN and CNR we promoted a school competition devoted to consider the role of women in science and particularly in Physics. Outreach activities can have the role of raising awareness, knowledge through an active involvement of students for changing the culture and removing stereotypes. In these years we organized 3 contests, with 226 videos, more than 100 high schools and a thousand of students involved. The idea was to try to understand the thinking and knowledge of young people on present and past gender issues connected to women and science, to know how they imagine the society of the future, to understand if they are unaware "carriers" of stereotypes and prejudices and if the cultural change can start from/with them. The students have been asked to produce a video on subjects regarding these questions. The article describes the contests, the evaluation process, the results of first analysis. The work started inside the EU-funded GENERA project, to which both research groups belong, and continues inside the GENERA Network. The collaboration among physicists and sociologists has been, and still is, fundamental in these years

Contributo al femminile all’educazione tecnica e scientifica per le materie STEM. Fare rete tra scienziate/i, enti, università, associazioni, media e portatori d’interesse

Questo “contributo al femminile” è stato realizzato da un gruppo di perso- ne che ambisce a contribuire al miglioramento dell’educazione scolastica; è destinato a donne, uomini, ragazze, ragazzi, bambine e bambini per mettere in luce potenzialità, diseguaglianze, specificità di vita e professionali e favorire la parità di genere soprattutto negli ambiti tecnico-scientifici, in particolar modo nelle discipline STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics)

Human resources in higher education and research

The workshop "Human resources for research: perspectives and tendencies for researchers\u27career, expectations and job satisfaction in the European research area" aimed to explore the state of play of scientific policies of individual European countries and tried to clarify the limits of individual national research systems to achieve the aim of creating the European Research Area. Further the objective of the meeting was to propose a critical reflection on traditional indicators of development of scientific careers (from EU, and other OECD institutions), the innovative nature of the workshop was to pay particular attention to the expectations system and researchers motivations towards scientific work and development of careers in research. Expectations and motivations of researchers could not be ignored analysing the process of scientific careers in Europe. The workshop focused on internal factors of human resources in R&D: work environment, transparency in career, consistency between education and job content, confidence in the system valuation. It have been very interdisciplinary reflecting the wild contribution to the research field of human resources in science and technology. Studies of Human Resources in S&T are placed across more disciplines and the interdisciplinary guided the selection of workshop participants and speakers, assuring a balance between sociologists of science and education, economists and trainers