La percezione di competenza degli insegnanti nell'azione didattica per lo sviluppo delle abilità di studio. Ricerca empirica con insegnanti di scuola primaria e secondaria di primo grado

This research aimed firstly at exploring teachers' beliefs about teaching and learning study skills, as well as the teaching practices related to such beliefs and claimed by teachers. For this purpose two 40-item questionnaires were created and administered to more than 150 primary and secondary school teachers. Items in the first questionnaire were based on 4-point Likert scale (from "not true at all" to "really true") and explored beliefs about discipline, best teaching practices for study skills, theories of mind and intelligence, study strategies and approaches. The second questionnaire was focused on frequency of teaching practices for study skills, with answers ranging from "never" to "always". Secondly the research presented here was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of a training aimed at improving teaching practices for study skills. For a long time study skills have been regarded to as the combination of intelligence or will, while teaching has been mainly devoted to disciplinary content. Since the 80s many promising studies have highlighted the effectiveness of instructional practices based on metacognitive strategies, self-regulation and motivation in teaching study skills. Therefore an intervention about teaching practices for primary and junior high school teachers was developed. The training was attended by 35 voluntary. Results of descriptive and inferential analyses are reported and discussed in the present dissertation, whose final chapters are focused on pedagogical implications and further research developments