The present study analyzed the efficacy of a brief intervention aimed at scaffolding readers' "recursivity" (i.e., going back to the texts) while reading multiple texts and writing an argumentative essay. The participants were 151 university students, randomly assigned to two conditions: experimental (Recursivity-induced, RI) and active…

In this work, we explore the use of digital technologies and statistical analysis to monitor how Italian secondary school students' writing changes over time and how comparisons can be made across different high school types. We analyzed more than 2,000 exam essays written by Italian high school students over 13 years and in five different school…

Even small, taken-for-granted words can have a strong influence on the pedagogical effect of a writing conference. In this study, we examined how experienced and trained writing center tutors' use of the discourse marker so helped them to connect ideas and to manage their conferences with students. We examined the extent to which tutors' use of…

Copying a text quickly and accurately is important both in school and in daily life. However, this skill has never been systematically studied, either in children with typical development (TD) or in children with specific learning disabilities (SLD). The aim of this research was to study the features of a copy task and its relationship with other…

Despite the importance of reflection as a crucial element in stimulating successful student experience in study abroad, attempts to define and measure this construct have been fraught with difficulty. This article describes one approach to defining and validating a measure of the reflective process. University students who participated in a…

This chapter describes a practice of philosophical meditation as a way to transformation in an Italian context. It makes use of poetic and autoethnographic writing to highlight some features of the method, and offers suggestion for adult education practice.

Polymathy may be defined as the productive pursuit of multiple endeavors, simultaneously or serially, across a lifetime. As such, polymathic breadth of interest across knowledge domains characterizes Nobel laureates in the sciences, literature, economics, and peace, though interest patterns vary between groups. Economics laureates, like science…

The intensification of the working life of academics in the corporate world of higher education shaped by new public management, is the backdrop for an exploration of the appropriation of opportunities for silence and quietude through the operation of internalised disciplines of self-imposed control. The paper includes a review of selected…

This article seeks to discuss the relations between reading and writing against the historical backdrop of the initial affirmation of the "studia humanitatis" in fifteenth-century renaissance Italy and its initial movement towards the North of Europe. It focuses first on the theory of education and learning expressed in the Treatises of…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe how organizational members became storywriters of an important process of organizational change. Writing became a practice designed to create a space, a time and a methodology with which to author the process of change and create a learning context. The written stories produced both the…

In higher education, case studies can be utilized to have students put themselves into problems faced by a protagonist and, by doing so, address academic or career-related issues. Working through these issues provides students with an opportunity to gain applied perspective and experiences. Professors in higher education who choose this method of…

This paper will present a translation project with second-year bachelor students together with some observational data. The students firstly translated an academic abstract from Italian (their first language) to English by using the language resources they were acquainted with. Then they translated a second abstract by using a pre-compiled offline…

Students and teachers from different language backgrounds are at risk of becoming victims of conflicting trends and conventions when writing in English. This study compares conventions of English academic writing at several European universities with what is taught in English-speaking countries. Data were collected with questionnaires and by…

The purpose of this study was to investigate consistency in spelling skills across 2 different tasks of written production (dictation vs. composition) and stability of performance across 4 different grades. We assessed 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders' spelling performance through 4 tasks: 2 dictation tasks (passage and sentences) and 2 composition…

The purpose of this autoethnographic study is to share the power of writing as a transformative research method (Custer, 2014). This study draws from the life of a nontraditional adult learner doctoral student, who while traveling through Italy alone, embarked on a journey of self-discovery and transformation. Using a narrative voice, the…