Today’s adolescents represent an elective target in addressing environmental challenges. Education is a key factor in achieving a sustainable future for them. However, formal education can represent a challenge when youths are its target, as they are considered the “interactive generation”. Game-based learning, and, in particular, Digital Educational Escape Rooms (DERs), have emerged as innovative methods in education, with promising applications in environmental sustainability studies. In this study, we developed 14 Digital Escape Rooms using the Social Cognitive Theory of Bandura as a theoretical framework. These were focused on environmental education and we tested them on a sample of 411 students (aged 12–18 years; 158 female, 38.4%). A one-group quasi-experimental research design was adopted, carrying out a pre-test post-test analysis. Each participant completed assessments at two time points: before engaging in the escape rooms (T0) and after (T1). The assessment tools included the Goal Assessment Scale (GAS) and the Perceived Climate Self-Efficacy Scale. Our findings revealed no significant gender differences in goal achievement. However, at T0, females exhibited higher levels of perceived climate self-efficacy in both individual and collective dimensions. Instead, the Digital Escape Rooms appeared particularly effective in increasing self-efficacy among male participants. These results suggest that Digital Escape Rooms hold potential for enhancing environmental self-efficacy, although gender differences in baseline efficacy levels warrant further exploration.

Artificial intelligence is affecting every aspect of our lives and especially the lives of children, as they are developing relationships with technology which are more complex and different than the relationships of those who came before them. Integrating AI into education has the potential to entail a number of pitfalls and ethical challenges that need to be addressed. Moreover, relationships with AI will be crucial in a future in which students, as active citizens, will play a pivotal role in defining the effects and implications of AI. It is thus important to educate both teachers and students in the use of AI, making them aware of its risks and potentialities as well as of the controversial effects of human–AI complementarity. Starting from a review of the most relevant studies on this topic, this chapter aims to define a framework to inspire curricular design, the adoption of suitable teaching and learning approaches and the development of the necessary skills, attitudes, and mindsets for children to thrive with artificial intelligence. Such a curriculum would nurture attitudes such as knowledge-rich creativity, problematisation, and critical thinking and judging. Throughout the definition of this framework, we advocate for more pedagogically founded principles for designing curricula and promoting teaching and learning activities dealing with AI, as opposed to the proliferation of curricula with a technocentric vision. <!----> <!----> <!----> <!---->

During pre-service teacher and educator training it is essential that future teachers and educators learn how to design a learning module or a curriculum and that they master an approach of learning design, considering also inclusion and equity issues to increase participation and learning of all the students, embracing their diversities and addressing their different needs. The aim of this study is to describe an encompassing approach of learning design infused of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) that was developed and adopted within a Faculty’s Laboratory on educational technology targeted at future primary school teachers and within a Course on Maker Education for the future educators of the Degree Course in Education. This Framework is the result of the experimentation of various previous versions of it during the last two academic years and appears to promote the creation of accessible, engaging and inclusive maker education projects that meet the needs of each learner.

A growing number of studies show that integrating exercise interventions (such as active breaks) into teaching is associated with physical, mental, emotional, and social benefits and improved cognitive performance in some disciplines, including mathematics. This paper presents a review of previous SRs and MAs that have addressed the topic, with particular references to mathematics and students with special educational needs. In addition to outlining the research trends regarding the introduction of physical activity interventions in instructional design, which have emerged from the evidence already summarized at the international and national levels, the effectiveness of different programs undertaken to implement physical activity in the classroom about the primary outcomes examined by the studies will be discussed. Effetti dell’integrazione dell’attività fisica in classe: una panoramica preliminare delle ricerche precedenti. Un numero crescente di studi mostra che l’integrazione nella didattica di interventi di esercizio fisico (come le pause attive) è associata a benefici sul piano fisico, mentale, emozionale, sociale, nonché ad un miglioramento delle prestazioni cognitive in alcune discipline, tra cui la matematica. Questo contributo presenta una revisione di precedenti SR e MA che hanno trattato il tema, con particolare riferimento alla matematica e ad alunni/e con bisogni educativi speciali. Oltre a illustrare le tendenze di ricerca in merito all’introduzione di interventi di attività fisica nella progettazione didattica, emerse dalle evidenze già sintetizzate a livello internazionale e nazionale, verrà discussa l’efficacia dei diversi programmi condotti per implementare l’attività fisica in aula in relazione ai principali outcome presi in esame dagli studi.