The first line of research is in the framework of studies on
adolescence. The current research regards school experience in
adolescents, particularly the feelings of classroom justice,
teacher's interpersonal behavior and their influence
on learning motivations and class membership of students.
A second line of research is in the field of social
representations. A current research regards representations of
clean/dirty, pure/impure shared by groups who differ for politics,
values and religion.
As regards the first line of
research, i.e. adolescence, a study
carried out with the aim to1) analyze secondary school students' and their
teachers' ideal representations of classroom justice, 2) deepen the
topic of students' sense of injustice, and 3) explore the links
between students' perceived injustice and their psychological
engagement in school, measured on different aspects (identification with one's own class,
learning motivation, dialogue with teachers). A questionnaire was
distributed to 400 Italian secondary school students and their 79
teachers. Results show that the representations of ideal classroom
justice refer to communication, principle of equality and
principles of effort/need, and that the positions of teachers and
students on these representations differ. Moreover, students report
a rather diffuse and shared feeling of being treated in an unjust
manner by their teachers, and this affects their psychological
engagement in school. A second reserch, in progress, concerning 600
secondary school students
explore the associations between teachers' interpersonal behavior
and students' outcomes (motivation, school mark, class membership),
with the mediator role of the perception of classroom justice
(distributive and interactional).
As regards the second line of
research concerning the social representations, a research on
representations of clean/dirty, pure/impure is done. A
questionnaire with closed-answer questions and a free association
task were distributed to 450 subjects. Results show how, in
effects, the concepts of dirt/cleanness, purity/impurity skip from
their daily praxis connotations and assume a symbolic function for
discriminating between individuals and social groups.
