Current Pediatric Research

Background: Educational Poverty (EP) is associated with socio-cultural and economic disadvantage mainly during the first years of life. Unfortunately, current education systems focus on knowledge transmission, neglecting the know-how and the motivation for learning; we hypothesize that increasing awareness on one’s cognitive processes and actions allows optimizing both learning and the perception of academic success. Methods: 88 subjects between the ages of 9 and 10 were recruited from eight schools in the province of Caserta and Naples and were randomly assigned to two groups, each of which received one of two different treatments: Structural Organizational (SO) model centered on resilience vs. Motivational Metacognitive Model (MM). Results: Both interventions were effective in improving academic skills, but the MM intervention allowed a more significant improvements in the correctness parameter, both for reading and calculation skills, as well as for writing skills and in the perception of academic success. Conclusion: Our study shows that a didactic intervention of a metacognitive type is effective within subjects living in a disadvantaged condition and contributes to increasing knowledge about educational poverty. Moreover, it could offer an example of intervention on school systems aimed at improving both teaching quality and educational plans.

Author(s): Frolli A*, Ricci MC, Rizzo S, Di Carmine F, Rega A, Savarese G, Franzese L

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