Teachers' evaluations of students do not consider only academic competence, but are imbued with social considerations related to individual teacher and student characteristics, their interactions, and the surrounding context. The aim of this paper is understanding the extent to which teachers grade girls more generously than boys, and which…

The combined use of origami and dynamic geometry software has recently appeared in mathematics education to enrich students' geometric thinking. The objective of this research is to study the roles played by the interaction of two artifacts, paper folding and GeoGebra, in a construction-proving problem as well as its generalization in the…

In this paper we interpret pervasive difficulties with second degree inequalities as a macro-phenomenon emerging from Large Scale Assessment. In line with the theory of reification, we link common students' difficulties to approaches they use that undermine the intertwining of processes and the ensuing emergent mathematical objects. To frame the…

Operations Research (OR) is a branch of applied mathematics that deals with optimization problems arising from different real contexts. The solving process of its problems is based on the construction and resolution of mathematical models, showing the possible connections between mathematics and the real world. Nevertheless, OR is not typically…

Astronomy is seen as a "gateway" science, inspiring students to pursue Science-Technology-Engineering-Mathematics (STEM) related careers. However, there is little evidence that students' attitudes towards astronomy remain stable over time. By integrating Self-Determination Theory (SDT) and Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), we identified…

Smartphones are the principal instrument for internet access among adolescents and pre-adolescents in many industrialized countries. However, research on the long-term correlates of age at first access to these devices concerning life outcomes is scarce. This study contributes to the literature by collecting data from 3,247 Italian students in…

Nowadays, an increasing number of children and adolescents living in Europe have an immigrant background. Because ethnicity is a recognizable characteristic that may become the driver of bullying, these youths are at high risk of victimization. School interventions based on peer-led approaches, assuming all the conditions postulated in contact…

The learning of algebra represents a difficulty within the mathematics learning process. Precisely because of their epistemological and ontological nature, semiotics provides a good key to understanding the main difficulties that hinder the learning of algebraic objects. The answers to a large scale assessments task that requires a treatment in…

In the frame of national Italian standardized assessments in mathematics, a didactic phenomenon has been observed concerning students' behaviour when answering an item: students are inclined towards not accepting an output which is not clearly recognizable with something distinct from the starting inputs. The observed effect seems to originate…

I explored the effect of socio-economic status (SES) on mathematics achievement by gender at grades 5 in 2012 and 10 in 2017. Secondary Italian data (30,868 pupils in primary and 38,091 in secondary school) were analysed via the Rasch model to estimate students' ability in mathematics and then via a three-level regression (students nested into…

This article describes the state of informatics education in the Italian secondary schools, highlighting how the learning objectives set up by the Ministry of Education are difficult to meet, due to the fact that the subject is often taught by teachers not holding an informatics degree, the lack of suitable teaching material and the expectations…