University of Milano-Bicocca

Alessandra Mussi is a Ph.D. student in Education and Communication Sciences, “Riccardo Massa” Department of Human Sciences and Education, at Bicocca University.
After a master degree in Cultural Anthropology and a field research experience in Egypt about gender issue, her research interests are now about: intercultural pedagogy, qualitative research and ethnography in the educational contexts, migrant parenthood, cultural, familiar and contextual influences on child’s development, Arab communities and gender issues.
In ISOTIS she is involved in WP2, especially in the qualitative study which foresees in-depth interviews with Maghrebian mothers in Italy.

Dr. Andrea Mangiatordi (m) graduated in Communication and Multimedia Publishing and obtained a PhD in “Quality of Life in the Information Society”. In the last six years, he has been a Research Fellow at the Education Department of the University of Milano Bicocca. His research focuses on Accessibility and Universal Design in the areas of Online Communication and of Educational Content Design. He is also the developer of an Open Source software toolbar that allows to incorporate accessibility features in a website both from the user and from the developer side: this project has been awarded both nationally and internationally. He also participated in the CATS project, funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, evaluating the accessibility of instructional content and of educational environments. He also collaborated with the Italian Libraries Association in disseminating tools and best practices about ebooks, digital reading and accessibility.
He is part of the University of the Future Network, a not-for-profit organization where experts in the field of Educational Technology are discussing themes of innovation and policies for the future of higher education.

Caterina Falcone has a degree in Psychology of Development and Educational Methods. Her master’s thesis regarded the Multicultural Mind and its empathic processes. In 2016 she become a Psychologist of Child Development.
She has been working for many years in various intercultural centres and social cooperative companies involved in the development and assistance for minorities. She has been collaborating with Milano-Bicocca University (Department of Human Sciences for Education “R. Massa”), since 2014 in research projects in the field of Intercultural Pedagogy, with a keen interest towards inclusiveness of early childhood education and care services, quality of the educational practices in scholastic context and teachers training.
She also was involved in the CARE project – Curriculum Quality Analysis and Impact Review of European ECEC, funding from the European Union. The central aim of this international project was to develop an evidence-based and culture-sensitive European framework for improving the quality and effectiveness of early childhood education and care.
Currently she is a doctoral student and her principal research field regards educational processes implicated in scholastic contexts and the study of stakeholders’ voice (teachers, pupils and parents) who are involved in multilingual and intercultural project using a Virtual Learning Environment.

Chiara Bove is Associate Professor at the University of Milan-Bicocca where she teaches 'Intercultural Pedagogy’ as part of the Degree in Intercultural Communication and “Theories and practices of educational communication” as part of the Master Degree in Education. In the past she has thought “Qualitative research method in Education” and “Intercultural Pedagogy” as part of the Degree in Education. She has conducted her research in the ECE field and she has participated and is still involved in several research projects. Among them in recent years: Systems of Early Education/Care and professionalization in Europe (SEEPRO, on going; Coordinate by Pamela Oberhuemer); the international European FP7 Programme: CARE Early childhood education and care: promoting quality for individual, social and economic benefits. (2013-2017; coordinated by Paul Leseman); the international project Teacher's Behaviour Analysis in Infant Toddler Center. Instruments and methods for training within a cross national research project, in collaboration with the University of Knoxville-Tennessee (2009-2012); the research Together. Centres for children and adults, in collaboration with the ISTC, Rome (2009-2012); and Children Crossing Borders, with J. Tobin (Bernard Van Leer Foundation, 222.039.2004). Her recent research topics concerns intercultural issues in the ECE field, parents’ participation and school and family relationships in pre-primary educational settings, and the use of video in educational research and professional development. She has published a range of articles, chapters, books and reports. She is country coordinator of the EECERA conference.

Dr. Fabrizia Mantovani is an assistant professor of General Psychology currently affiliated with the Centre for Studies in Communication Sciences at the Department of Sciences for Education at the University of Milano – Bicocca. She has a strong theoretical and experimental research background in communication psychology, psychology of emotions and new media psychology. Her main research interests concern the design, development and validation of technology- enhanced education and training programs for soft skills, based on the use of serious games, virtual reality and affective computing.

Prof. Giorgio Vittadini is a full professor in Methodological Statistics at the University of Milan-Bicocca and CRISP. His main research interests are Multivariate Analysis, Structural and Latent Variables Models, Evaluation Problems in the field of Public Utility Services (with particular reference to Education and Health) and Human Capital estimation. He published in international journals such as Multivariate Behavioural Research, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Journal of Educational and Behavioural Statistics, Economic Modelling, Journal of Economic Surveys, Econometric Reviews and Computational Statistics & Data Analysis.

Giulia Pastori is researcher and senior lecturer at the University of Milano-Bicocca, where she teaches General Pedagogy (master degree in Psychology), Methods of Educational Research and Intercultural Education (degree of Primary education – Formazione Primaria). PhD obtained in 2008 in Communication and Education Sciences with a research on immigrant children’s identity and ECEC curriculum and pedagogy. Her national and international research experience deals with multiculturality, pluri/multi-lingualism, curriculum in ECEC services and school; ECEC and school quality, evaluation and improvement; qualitative and quantitative research methods and software-supported data Analysis and Coding; comparative cross-cultural research; and students’voice research.
In the last ten years she has participated and has coordinated several national and International research project. At the international level, she participated to the Children Crossing Borders study, coordinated by J. Tobin, University of Georgia (Bernard Van Leer Foundation, 222.039.2004) and to the SIRIUS project, European Policy Network Education For Children With A Migrant Backgrounds sector, coordinated by prof. M.A. Essomba, University of Barcellona. She has coordinated the Italian team within the the international European FP7 Programme: CARE Early childhood education and care: promoting quality for individual, social and economic benefits. (2013-2017; coordinated by Paul Leseman) and she is now Principal Investigator for the Italian team within the Isotis Project.

Paolo Ferri, since 2001 researcher in New Media at University of Milano-Bicocca -Department “Scienze Umane per la formazione R. Massa” (http://www.formazione.unimib.it/ ). Currently he is Full Professor of New Media and Technology of Education, in the same Department where he also supervises the Laboratory for Digital Education. Recent research activities: new media theories and new technologies in education; e-learning and long distance teaching (a specific research has been carried out with IBM Foundation-Italy); organizational processes in Business and in Education related with new technologies and E-HR. He is, also, consultant for Mondadori Publishing Group for Educational and E-learning projects.

Pietro Giorgio Lovaglio is Associate Professor of Statistics at the Department of Statistics and Quantitative Methods, University of Bicocca-Milan, since 2006 and Senior Researcher and Member of the Scientific Board of Research Center CRISP at University of Bicocca Milan, a research center aiming to promote and develop research programs on the Service of Public Utility to the person Efficacy, Efficiency, Equity, Customer Satisfaction. He is Member of the Academic Staff for the PhD program “Statistics and Applications and Member of the Scientific Board for the Master program “Business Intelligence and Statistics for Decisions Support”.
He is an expert of Data mining and Multivariate analysis. His current research topics are in the area of: model selection, models for high-dimensional data, hierarchical models and models for latent variables.
He is the author of over 60 papers on peer-reviewed journals (Google Scholar Citations 227, h-Index =9) and has published among others in: Econometric reviews, Quality and Quantity, Journal of economic surveys, Structural change and economic dynamics, Computational Statistics and data analysis, The Lancet Infectious Diseases and Springer books.
Concerning the area of applied statistics, he conducted research and participated to research projects in several areas such as: Human Capital estimation, earnings trajectories and education returns, Evaluation methods in Health and Education (effectiveness and efficiency), Labour Market Outcomes and transition analysis, Analysis of labour earnings and education levels, Analysis of labour market analysis with administrative data, Quality assessment and evaluation in public services.

Dr. Silvia Pozzi is an associate professor of Chinese Language and Literature at the State University of Milan – Bicocca. Her scientific activity has been mainly focused on Chinese contemporary literature and Chinese contemporary culture, Chinese television, Literary translation Chinese>Italian, and Chinese L2 for Italians. Since three years she is member of the scientific committee for multilingual project (Italian-English-Chinese) at “Collegio San Carlo” of Milan, she is in charge of designing and programming the pioneering courses of Chinese language in infant pre-primary (3-6) and primary school and of selecting and training (Italian and Chinese) teachers.

Prof. Susanna Mantovani is interested in the research areas of Early Childhood Education and Care; Adult-Child and Peer Relationships; Early Childhood Pedagogy; Pre-primary Education; ECEC Policies; Children and Family Policies; Parents participation and Home-School Relationships; Early childhood and Technologies; Professional Development in Education and Care; and Intercultural Education; Qualitative Research Methods in Education. She acted as consultant for the OCSE Early Childhood Project in 1976-79 and has been involved in the Project Starting Strong (2001-2003). She was a consultant for many international projects for the Bernard Van Leer Foundation (1977-1985) and Scientific Director (1985-91) for the project financed by the Bernard Van Leer Foundation Tempo per le Famiglie (Time for Families) for children aged 0 to 3 and their parents. Mantovani has been co-founder and President after Loris Malaguzzi of the Gruppo Nazionale Nidi Infanzia (1996-2002). She was a member of the Osservatorio Nazionale per l’infanzia e l’Adolescenza( 1999-2002). She was part of all the National Committees for the Guidelines for Preprimary Schools in Italy since 1989; member of the Board of UNICEF Italia (2009-2011); member of the Scientific Committee for the Project Interculture (Foundation Cariplo 2007-2009) and a member of the Scientific Committee for the Fondazione Intercultura. She is the scientific director for the Experimental Day care centre Bambini Bicocca (Università di Milano-Bicocca/City of Milan/ Pirelli/Pirelli Real Estate/ Deutsche Bank) and a promoter of the Network of University Day Care Centres).

Valentina Pagani holds a PhD from the University of Milan-Bicocca, Department of Human Sciences for Education “R. Massa”. She is assistant lecturer at the University of Milan-Bicocca, and she worked in quality of research-assistant in the collaborative project CARE (Curriculum Quality Analysis and Impact Review of European ECEC). Her research interests deal with Intercultural Education, qualitative and quantitative research methodologies in education, evaluation of school quality, and student voice studies.

Dr. Valentino Zurloni is an assistant professor, currently affiliated with the Centre for Studies in Communication Sciences, at the Department of Human Sciences for Education at the University of Milano-Bicocca. His expertise is tied to the psychology of culture, meant as a conceptual horizon of understanding of communication and emotional processes. This interest has resulted in the implementation and validation of educational protocols for encourage multicultural membership, within the theoretical paradigm of multicultural mind as the ability to know and to follow patterns of different cultures. Specifically, this theoretical paradigm has been applied in the project “Fostering the multicultural mind “, which analyses the conditions underlying the comparability of the models and the cultural categories of Chinese and Italian pupils.