The present study addressed an area of research not yet sufficiently investigated: the environmental sensitivity trait in relation to perceived marginalization in the classroom, dropout intentions, and the quality of teacher-student relationship. Adopting a psychosocial perspective and based on a single study survey with a group of Italian…

Early school leaving has profound implications at a socio-economic level and planning effective prevention programs within school is crucial for contrasting it. Based on the hypothesis that the dropout is the last step of a process that ends in the student's decision to leave school, we studied the interplay between multiple risk factors of school…

In this work, we investigate whether grants improve the academic outcomes of students from socio-economically disadvantaged families and thereby reduce inequalities of educational opportunities. We focus on Italy, which is characterized by high dropout rates, prolonged duration of higher education studies and considerable social inequalities in…

This paper investigates the effectiveness of a small experimental pilot addressed to foreign adolescents with low language skills and high dropout risk in lower secondary school in Turin, North-West Italy. The intervention aims at reducing Early School Leaving while supporting standard school curricula. In order to facilitate students'…

This paper combines a theoretical-based model with a data-driven approach to develop an Early Warning System that detects students who are more likely to dropout. The model uses innovative multilevel statistical and machine learning methods. The paper demonstrates the validity of the approach by applying it to administrative data from a leading…

This article presents a critical policy historiography of how Early School Leaving has been understood as a social problem and what policy responses have been enacted to tackle it in the Italian context, devoting a specific attention to the analysis of the translation of EU policy ideas, tools and recipes to reduce ESL. It shows how the…

Early school leaving is a real social emergency across Europe. Literature and field experience show that the factors leading to the decision to drop out of school are different: family problems, economic distress, territorial discomfort. In addition, there are individual characteristics such as: psychological dimensions, ease/difficulty of…

Through a mixed methods approach, this article explores young people's perceptions about critical issues in secondary school and the improvements being made to prevent dropout risk. The empirical data were gathered from a representative sample of young people (14-24) in a socioeconomically disadvantaged region in the European Union. A principal…

Purpose: The article describes an evaluation study to test the effectiveness of "Storie in gioco" project (Stories in Play, Storie in gioco [SIG]), a dropout prevention intervention aimed to prevent early school leaving (ESL) in at risk students. Method: The research used a mixed-method approach: in the quantitative phase, a two-group…

Early School Leaving (ESL) is a complex phenomenon caused by multidimensional factors spanning personal, social and economic problems. We carried out two online surveys with 796 teachers and 900 students from Bulgaria, Italy, Malta, Romania and Turkey completed standard electronic surveys. The teachers' survey consisted of secondary school…

This book presents how to keep working on education in contexts of crisis, such as emergencies, zones of conflict, wars and health pandemics such as COVID-19. Specifically, this work shows a number of strategies to support global learning and teaching in online settings. Particularly, it first presents how to facilitate knowledge sharing and…

It is well-known that socio-economic background matters in determining student performance. Systematic reviews confirm that a key role in shaping this association is played by parental involvement. Not surprisingly, successful interventions in education frequently have parental engagement as a key ingredient of their protocol, and the attention…

The mortality of university students requires actions in order to contrast this phenomenon and increase the attractiveness of the higher study. Pedagogy is one of the subject under siege in the sense that a considerable number of students tend to avoid or postpone the exam. After an empirical study conducted in 2006, contents and methodology of…

My purpose for this exploratory qualitative research was to gain insights into the perceptions of high school students in Italy who receive private tutoring in mathematics, about their experience and expectations. Little prior research from the perspective of the students has been conducted. Results suggest that some students use private tutoring…

The work the authors are going to describe in this paper is an account of the attempt to re-establish an educational relationship with adolescent drop-outs, for whom school often represented a cage from which they either escaped or were expelled. An experimental school scheme named the Chance Project has been operating in Naples for the past three…