In recent years, the socio-material perspective has informed an important interdisciplinary debate concerning the role of the physical world (i.e., the objects) in human psychological development. ...Several studies in the field of developmental psychology showed positive achievements in explaining the relationship between the subject and the social context through a socio-material approach, in particular in the early development. The importance of objects was also recognized in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), showing that these children are characterized by alterations in the use of the objects from early development. Some studies highlighted that objects could be a facilitator in the interactions between children with ASD and peers. However, the role of objects was not sufficiently investigated in interactions between children with ASD and adults. The main purpose of the present study was to investigate in children with ASD the communicative function that the activities with objects assume in the interactions with adults, highlighting the mediator role of objects in these interactions. More generally, this study also aims to highlight the relevance of adopting a socio-material perspective to explore some neglected aspects of the psychological activity of children with ASD. To test this hypothesis, we conducted an extensive exploratory study, collecting data from a sample of 3-year-old (
= 18;
= 3) and 4-year-old (
= 26;
= 3) with ASD. Children were observed in a free-play situation with an adult. They were free to choose an object from a predefined set. Through quantitative data, we have described the general characteristics of the manipulation of objects; through qualitative data, we aimed to capture and describe, in microgenetic sequences, some characteristics of children's activities, defined as socio-material. The analysis of the socio-material activities suggested the role of objects as mediator of the interactions between children with ASD and adults.
In the state-of-the-art of structural engineering the actions for design or assessment of bridges should derive from a probabilistic (i.e., frequentist) characterization of the loads. Data from ...weigh-in-motion (WIM) systems can inform stochastic models for traffic loads. However, WIM is not widespread, and data of this kind are scarce in the literature and often not recent. Due to structural safety reasons, the 52 km long A3 highway in Italy, connecting the cities of Naples and Salerno, has been equipped with a WIM system which has been operational since the beginning of 2021. The system's measurements of each vehicle transiting over the WIM devices, impede overloads on the many bridges featured in the transportation infrastructure. By the time of this writing the WIM system has seen one year of uninterrupted operation, collecting more than thirty-six million datapoints in the meantime. This short paper presents and discusses these WIM measurements, deriving the empirical distributions of traffic loads and making the original data available for further research and applications.
This paper focuses on the learning processes of students involved in a pedagogical design bridging in-class and out-of-class activities. As academic teachers–researchers, we designed a semester-long ...course in which academic and out-of-university activities interact and overlap. The data were collected at the end of the course from student reports (diaries) and audio-recorded semi-structured interviews inspired by the elicitation interview technique. This technique involves a fine-grained description of the lived experience. We present selected excerpts in which students described their boundary-crossing movements between academic and out-of-university activities. Data were evaluated using a purpose-built analysis approach comprising two macro-categories and three sub-categories of students’ boundary-crossing movements. The results showed that specific learning processes emerged and developed through these movements. Implications for teaching and learning are highlighted.
In questo lavoro, in accordo con la prospettiva vygotskiana e focalizzando su alcuni aspetti della logica matematica, viene presentata una riflessione derivante da un insieme di ricerche che ...esplorano le relazioni tra linguaggio e sviluppo di abilità logiche. Si descrive la progettazione/implementazione di un dispositivo educativo, articolato in attività linguistico-manipolative realizzate in classi quarte di scuola primaria. Le attività si basano sulla costruzione e manipolazione di un linguaggio simbolico, socialmente condiviso, nato per far muovere un “bambino-robot” in una stanza. L’analisi qualitativa degli scambi sociali e del contenuto delle interviste di esplicitazione ha permesso di evidenziare come, attraverso il confronto dei diversi punti di vista, i bambini realizzano un processo dinamico di costruzione e negoziazione di significati matematici. In particolare, sono presentati alcuni temi comuni emersi dalle interviste che mostrano le modalità di elaborare le attività da parte dei bambini, collegate ad aspetti interindividuali e intraindividuali.
L’articolo propone una riflessione su alcuni elementi critici della costruzione del benessere professionale degli insegnanti mettendo in luce, accanto alle note cause di insorgenza della sindrome del ...burnout quali fattori individuali, emotivi e relazionali, anche gli effetti che sembrano riconducibili alla condizione lavorativa nel suo complesso e dunque al sistema di attività nel quale viene svolto questo mestiere. Per dar conto di tali effetti l’articolo discute i risultati di due contributi empirici, realizzati in modo indipendente, a distanza di dieci anni l’uno dall’altro, nel sistema scolastico italiano. In particolare i due studi fanno riferimento alla condizione di benessere socio professionale di insegnanti di scuola dell’infanzia e primaria in due fasi distinte dell’evoluzione del sistema scolastico italiano (che nell’arco dei dieci anni intercorsi fra i due studi è stato interessato da continui tentativi di riforme, da un crescente precariato, da un progressivo indebolimento del riconoscimento della professione, dalla presenza diffusa in classe di bambini di differenti culture, dall’introduzione, largamente approssimativa, di nuove tecnologie, dalla scarsa corrispondenza tra lavoro effettivo ed aspettative dei futuri insegnanti). Senza la pretesa di fornire risposte definitive ad un problema evidentemente complesso la ri-lettura dei due studi sul burnout, realizzati in due distinte fasi dell’evoluzione del sistema scolastico, pur confermando, in parte, i risultati di altri lavori simili, solleva il problema complementare della contestualizzazione delle modalità di espressione del disagio degli insegnanti in relazione al più ampio tessuto identitario professionale nel quale essi operano. Tessuto che sembra mutare al mutare del posizionamento sociale e culturale dell’insegnamento.
AimThis study focused on the manipulation of objects by children with suspected autism spectrum disorder. The aim was to demonstrate how objects can be seen as active agents of interpersonal exchange ...in face-to-face interactions.ParticipantsThree children with suspected autism spectrum disorder (aged 18, 20, and 24 months) were selected as representative of the sensorimotor stage of development.MethodsStarting from Piaget’s classical approach to the sensorimotor and symbolic developmental stages, the study moved toward a socio-material interpretation in which some patterns of interaction involving object manipulation seem to create a space that supports adult–child communication. In videotaped observations of verbal and non-verbal signs during an (organized) free play session, each child manipulated seven small blocks of colored plastic in the presence of an adult. The observations were informed by a checklist of 14 items, including eye contact and building a tower of toy blocks from section B of the CHAT (CHecklist for Autism in Toddlers) instrument.ResultsBased on a broad Piagetian perspective and recent work in the field of socio-materiality, key observations included the following: (1) sensorimotor and realistic play was observed in all three children; (2) there were some intriguing indications that objects serve as concrete mediators in the intersubjective space between adult and child; (3) some of the children’s attention patterns were visibly mediated by the object.Discussion and conclusionAll three children exhibited a particular sequence of actions. First, they manipulated the blocks through active experimentation; second, there was an apparent pause, during which, the children were in fact examining the blocks to determine how best to continue the interaction; and finally, the children monitored adult attention by means of eye contact or by restarting manipulation of the blocks. As this last step in the sequence indicated that the object became a mediator of reciprocal attention, this interpersonal process was labeled “attention mediated by object.”
Since scientists have a difficult task - studying something that everyone already knows or thinks they know - they must laboriously earn (with rigorous research methods) the respect of those ...intellectuals belonging to different fields, and that of others in general. A respect constrained to the filling of some serious gaps in sociology itself: for example, think of the many investigations that - excessively unbalanced on the theoretical side - show a marked philosophical imprint (and so they create a certain conceptual confusion between different sectors, even if they are connected), or to the sterile methodological disputes between standard and non-standard researchers, or to those studies that hide their shortcomings, their clichés and obvious statements behind rather imaginative words of wisdom or catchy slogans. It is therefore up to sociologists 2.0 to take matters into their own hands and above all their profession, in order to restore the dignity it deserves. They are the ones who will have to become aware of society, without waiting (perhaps in vain) for society to finally become aware of them. And it is still them - above all in Italy where culture remains largely a-sociological - who will have to orient themselves by seeking ever new (innovative) forms of participation and cooperation.
As the literature clearly shows, supporting the development of reflective awareness skills is undoubtedly an important element in learning processes. In psychology, multiple theoretical approaches ...and research work have delved into the study of what is termed implicit knowledge. In particular, the relationship between human activity (in terms of actions, thoughts, beliefs, motivation, and reasoning) and different levels of awareness is a relevant subject of analysis that we consider as the core of this paper. In order to deepen our understanding of the concepts of awareness and reflexive activity, we refer to Pierre Vermersch’s psycho-phenomenological approach and Piaget’s theory of cognitive awareness. In this paper, we aim to show the use of the reflective approach centered on the elicitation of specific lived experiences. The objective is to promote in students a process of awareness of their activity and their role within the university context. Two students case studies from the University of Salerno took part in the research. The method used was based on narrative interviews that makes use of some techniques and principles of elicitation interviews, a conversational approach that supports the participant in focusing and describing a specific experience. The interviewer guides subjects, without induction, through the transition from the implicit of lived experience (particularly action) to the explicit of reflected awareness of that action. The data collected show how reflective activity by means of guided evocations of lived experiences helped participants become aware of how some distortions and irrational thoughts (related to the self and context) negatively affected them during the activities. The reflective work fostered by the elicitation of experiences often allows for enhanced self-awareness; the subject takes ownership of the action, analyzes it, and understands the difficulties.
This paper presents preliminary findings of the project name omitted for anonymity. This interdisciplinary project builds on Argumentation theory and developmental sociocultural psychology for the ...study of children’s argumentation. We reconstruct children’s inferences in adult-child and child-child dialogical interaction in conversation in different settings. We focus in particular on implicit premises using the Argumentum Model of Topics (AMT) for the reconstruction of the inferential configuration of arguments. Our findings reveal that sources of misunderstandings are more often than not due to misalignments of implicit premises between adults and children; these misalignments concern material premises rather than the inferential-procedural level.
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