LIBRI DI BRUNO LOSITO

Nei giorni 17 e 18 novembre 2017 si è tenuta a Firenze la seconda edizione del Seminario “I dati INVALSI: uno strumento per la ricerca”. Il Servizio Statistico dell’INVALSI ha deciso di raccogliere i numerosi contributi di ricerca presentati in questa occasione in specifici testi tematici, che costituiscono degli approfondimenti su come i dati INVALSI possano contribuire ad approfondire l’interpretazione del mondo scolastico, nelle sue diverse sfaccettature.

Programme for International Student Assessment - PISA è un’indagine internazionale promossa dall’Organizzazione per la Cooperazione e lo Sviluppo Economico (OCSE) con periodicità triennale per accertare le competenze dei quindicenni scolarizzati. Il volume raccoglie saggi di studiosi di differenti ambiti disciplinari e provenienti da contesti di lavoro diversi (scuola, università, ricerca). I contributi sono stati selezionati sulla base di una chiamata pubblica e sottoposti a un processo di revisione da parte di esperti qualificati.

Iea international comparative studies traditionally include the use of background questionnaires. Data collected through those questionnaires are central to both international reports and secondary analyses, as they allow to better contextualize student results in the cognitive tests and help identify the school and classroom factors that have a direct or indirect impact on student performance. A systematic review of the literature on Pirls, Timss, and Iccs was conducted upstream, to identify those school, teacher, and classroom factors which are potentially useful predictors of student performance. Such a review highlighted that it is exceedingly difficult to draw causal inferences, as well as to find strong associations between process-related school variables and student achievement. The type of constructs and variables used in the questionnaire development, the way these constructs and variables are operationally defined, the self-reported nature of the collected data, and the kind of data analyses carried out all contribute to explain that difficulty. In order to verify whether the impact of specific school and teacher characteristics varies as a function of the socioeconomic status of students at the school level, a hierarchical multilevel analysis of Timss 2011 data was conducted. Data from the European countries particvipating in the survey were included in the analyses.The analysis measured what proportion of the variance was actually explained by the factors included in the model and whether the impact of the same factors varies in relation to the school socioeconomic background. A separate analysis was conducted for each considered country and the same multi-level regression model was used first on the schools as a whole, and then treating schools with high and low socioeconomic backgrounds (based on average student Ses at school level) as two distinct groups. In most countries, results showed the influence of socioeconomic status at school level for all three groups of schools - all schools, high Ses schools, and low Ses schools. Furthermore, results showed that school and teacher characteristics have different impacts across countries and in relation to school socioeconomic backgrounds.

The article illustrates and discusses aims, organization and activities of the Italian National Institute for the Evaluation of the Education System (Invalsi). In the first part of the article, the relations between the activities carried out by the Institute and the policies adopted in the field of evaluation at a national level are analyzed. The second part focuses on the national assessments carried out by the institute every year. Particularly, an analysis of the tests used in the assessment of reading comprehension and of the conceptual frameworks that oriented their drafting is developed, focusing mainly on the validity issue. Problems related to content validity were identified, as well as several ambiguities related to the aims of the assessments and the use of their results.

The article focuses on the evaluation initiatives and projects carried out in Italy in the recent years. It considers different projects aiming at evaluating the school system, the individual schools, and the universities. The purpose is to make explicit the conceptual and methodological assumptions behind them and to illustrate their impact on school and university teachers’ perceptions of assessment and evaluation. Particular attention is paid to the assessments carried out by the Italian National Institute for the Evaluation of the Education System. The article also discusses the relationships between evaluation and educational policies.

Building Citizenship competences at school: a subject is not enough - The article presents the ongoing debate on Citizenship Education in Italy compared with the debate carried out both at an International and at an European levels in the recent past years. Attention is paid to the definition and the development of citizenship competences as part of the broader key competences. The results of international comparative studies are used in order to suggest changes and improvements in the proposals related to the Italian school system.

Keywords Citizenship Education, key competences, competences, school innovation.