Abstract
This project aims to bring a scientific and pedagogically grounded informatics curriculum (PINI) into Italian primary schools, shifting focus from digital literacy to core computational thinking. It investigates teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), develops and tests instructional materials, and designs concept inventories to assess student learning. Through action research with teachers, the project evaluates the feasibility of PINI and explores its potential transfer effects to other disciplines. The consortium includes leading Italian research groups in informatics education, working to empower students with foundational concepts like algorithms, abstraction, and problem-solving. Results The Learning Informatics project investigated how informatics can be effectively introduced as a foundational discipline in Italian education, providing both a research basis and practical tools to support the implementation of the PINI curriculum and, more recently, the Nuove Indicazioni Nazionali (2025). The project combined literature reviews, empirical studies, teacher surveys, textbook analyses, the development of educational materials, and classroom experimentation, with the overall goal of strengthening teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and promoting a scientifically grounded approach to informatics education. Within this framework, the University of Bologna (UNIBO) played a central role across multiple research strands. It conducted a systematic review of low-cost and unplugged activities for early childhood education, showing that many existing proposals implicitly address informatics concepts and highlighting the need for more explicit and intentional teaching approaches. UNIBO also analyzed the evolution of the notions of coding, computational thinking, and informatics in Italian educational policies, clarifying their different meanings and their implications for curriculum design. In collaboration with other units, UNIBO contributed to the national survey of primary-school teachers and to the analysis of textbooks, identifying strengths and weaknesses in the treatment of key concepts such as algorithms, programming, and data representation. These studies provided evidence-based recommendations for aligning teaching practices with the new national curriculum. A major contribution concerned the development and validation of innovative teaching materials. UNIBO participated in the preparation of the teacher guide Sulle orme di Milù (Mondadori, 2026), updated the Olympiads of Problem Solving by introducing Python-based program comprehension tasks, and designed a set of unplugged activities for teaching classical and modern cryptography in primary school, integrating informatics with mathematics. These resources have been made freely available to facilitate their adoption and reuse. Overall, the project produced validated methodologies, educational resources, and empirical evidence supporting the integration of informatics into compulsory education. Through its research, curriculum analysis, teacher support initiatives, and innovative instructional materials, UNIBO made a substantial contribution to bridging research and classroom practice, helping establish informatics as a core component of general education in Italy.
Project details
Unibo Team Leader: Simone Martini
Unibo involved Department/s:
Dipartimento di Informatica - Scienza e Ingegneria
Coordinator:
Università degli Studi di Trento(Italy)
Total Unibo Contribution: Euro (EUR) 24.548,00
Project Duration in months: 29
Start Date:
28/09/2023
End Date:
28/02/2026
