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  • Policy Against Drop-out in Italy
    1-9
    Views:
    489

    In this essay I set out the current situation of Early School Leaving (ESL) in Italy by considering both data provided by institutional sources (national and international) and a review of the most recent contributions from the educational work that have been done intensively to fight against ESL over the last 20 years. I will argue that the way followed so far will not lead to surprising results, due to deep and structural persisting factors of inequality. After a short overview on the position of Italy in the European rankings, the article recalls the main interventions that took place in the country by different investors (public and non-public), setting up a multiplicity of fragmented macro-politics. Then I will look at the mechanisms of differentiation and unequal distribution of educational opportunities and I will conclude with suggestions on how to make the fight against ESL more efficient and forward-looking.

  • Educational poverty in Italy: concepts, measures and policies
    1-10
    Views:
    533

    In recent years in Italy, as a result of the initiative by the NGO Save the Children Italia and of the government action, we have witnessed the success of the notion of “povertà educativa”, as an effective way to indicate severe inequalities in education across the country. Firstly, the aim of this paper is to shed light on the different concepts and measures of educational poverty in socio-economic literature, in order to highlight specific and innovative aspects of this idea. Moreover, the paper intends to scrutinize Save the Children’s proposal in order to monitor and tackle educational poverty as well as to show how the action of the NGO has influenced the development of Italian recent government policies against child and educational poverty.

  • The interaction of meso and macro contexts with students’ careers. Three applied analysis
    10-21
    Views:
    187

    This paper presents three applied analysis. Our principal interest is to understand how meso (university level) and macro (national level) contexts interact with micro phenomena such as students’ careers. To achieve this aim, the paper shows a secondary analysis of longitudinal administrative data by means of Sequence Analysis and Event History Models. Furthermore, it shows the results of an additional analysis using a quasi-experimental research on longitudinal data.

    The paper examines typical pathways of Italian students, by means of administrative information’s on student enrollment from Sapienza University of Rome. The aim of this paper is triple: 1. describe students’ careers in higher education by building a typology of pathways using Sequence Analysis. 2. Identify how socio-economic and macro level characteristics affect students’ careers by multinomial logistic regression model where clusters are used as dependent variables and focus on the study of the “event” by using Event History analysis. 3. Evaluate the Italian Higher Education reform policies and their main outcomes throughout a quasi-experimental research.

    Mainly, the outcomes show the importance of the warming-up period, the individual choice and the exogenous events after enrolment in determining the success/failure of each career. Our outcomes suggest that Italian universities should rethink the mechanisms available to manage failure and guide student choices.

  • The Relations between Students’ Intercultural Communication Competencies and Employability
    72-79.
    Views:
    74

    In today’s globalised world, businesses operate on an international level. Most business and economics graduates will interact with colleagues, clients, and partners from diverse cultural backgrounds. Intercultural competencies are essential for their success and effective collaboration in the labour market. A special questionnaire was compiled to investigate students’ intercultural competencies. Based on the statements and responses of the questionnaire, the examination aimed to establish the principal components of the intercultural communication competencies of the students of a Hungarian university. In the next phase of the research, the principal components served to create student clusters which were analysed from a labour market point of view, focusing on advantages and disadvantages. The crucial question was: which cluster is in demand the most in the labour market? By utilizing a principal component analysis, the dataset was reduced to three key components. Subsequently, to classify the students into groups, a multivariate statistical procedure, i.e., cluster analysis, was used to reveal the structures by clearly considering the similarities of a relatively heterogeneous population and to create a relatively homogeneous subset. The study revealed five distinct student clusters, each with varying advantages and disadvantages for employers. In this context, the Interculturally Active and Open with Good Language Skills cluster proved to be the most competent, with the least ideal collection indisputably being the Interculturally Reluctant in Cooperating cluster. The research underscores the importance of intercultural communication competencies for employees and enriches our understanding of the dynamics between intercultural communication competencies and workforce readiness. Developing these competencies in foreign language classes will significantly facilitate our students’ employment.

  • “Narrating” Bodies. Physical “Reflexive” Activities between Gender Images and Socio-pedagogical Processes - Research on the Yoga’s Representations
    21-27
    Views:
    134

    This article intends to offer a reflection on how reflexive physical activities can support a socio-pedagogical approach to educating about gender diversity through media communication. We use the term “reflexive” to refer to all those activities aimed at enhancing the person and his relationships, self-realization, selfknowledge, and self-improvement: in other terms, a circuit of bodily experiences that determine bodily knowledge as a social construction (as described by Connel, 2005). These activities focus mainly on ethical purposes, rather than on performative ones. An example of such disciplines can be considered the practice of yoga which is a currently growing phenomenon both in Europe and in the United States. Yoga is practiced today in the USA by 35.2 million adults, by over 2.5 million people in Italy, and is garnering scientific interest in its contributions to balanced, healthy growth of children and adults. The World Health Organization, in its global action plan on physical activity 2018-2030: More Active People for a Healthier World, calls it a means to improve health. The diffusion of these disciplines responds to a personal and social search for meaning that weighs especially heavily on highly secularized Western culture. This diffusion also portrays a media phenomenon, whose images and messages validate and reinforce capitalist ethics. From this point of view, the “mediated” representation of sports bodies appears to apply to the world of consumers. The images of women practicing yoga, oriented toward alternative values rather than beauty and sexuality, are above all confirmed by the purchase of goods and services that are not related to outward personal appearance. Using the results of an analysis carried out in 2021 of two main international yoga magazines, we are going to discuss the role of yoga as a “reflexive” physical activity and its pedagogical potential oriented to the body as a “primary place of experience”, not just a consumer item, but also a tool for education about gender diversity.

  • The anthropological meaning of marriage: main lines
    1-6
    Views:
    206

    Marriage is a deeply rooted institution, but today it is in big crisis. In Italy – with regard to 2015, the latest available survey – 194,377 marriages were celebrated (246,613, in 2008), but separations were 91,706 (84,165 in 2008) and divorces 82,469 (54,351 in 2008). It is a trend in line with European data. Is marriage only an "archaeological" residual? Actually, also today the fascination of marriage survives as it is confirmed in many books on the theme and within the media where, even when the marriage takes place between subjects who have experienced the previous failure, it is described as if it were the first and the last. Of course, so many cohabitations out of marriage are related to a change of mentality, but not so deep to reject marriage as public institution. My short contribution (recently I published a book on the issue) aims to support the challenge of love in the perspective of marriage. In my opinion, the mistake about freedom could be the cause of current fragility, and education to marriage could be the possible strategy to face the problem. I start by focusing on the anthropological depth of the institution of marriage, whose recognition supports the motivation to preserve and promote the value of the wedding.