Abstract:

Studying difficulties observed in teenagers do not appear at once, but they are the result of a process that parents and teachers do not perceive immediately. In order to gain good results in the study, teenagers should learn to reflect on the positive influence of self-regulating cognitive, metacognitive, affective and volitional processes within the learning process. If students know how to communicate effectively with their adult partner, this turns out to be a winning goal in the educational process.

The risk of social exclusion and of school failure, for students that feel uncomfortable with standard education parameters, is remarkable. Diversity within the school context represents a challenge that involves all the main agents of change: teachers, school administrators, families and extracurricular educational agencies, each with specific functions. In order to achieve the social inclusion of these students, teachers should adopt new teaching methods, original solutions, tailored to individual pupils and contexts, new educational-pedagogical activities customized for the individual students and the different contests.

Social exclusion can be overcome by activating learning centred ‘educational paths’, taking into account all the dimensions of the student’s personality (cognitive, metacognitive, practical-operational, affective, motivational, relational and social) in ‘authentic’ contexts, where communication and social interaction take place with other people, peers and adults (teachers or experts), facilitators, coaches, counsellors or tutors, even through new technologies.

We believe that deep thinking and independent learning are more likely to occur when effective learning and thinking strategies are explicitly discussed and employed by the teacher and students. Reflection and metacognition are key skills used in this process. Students who employ reflection and metacognition know how to approach learning and are aware of/able to evaluate and regulate their own thinking. SRL (Self-regulation Learning) researches have suggested that students are self-regulated to the degree that they are meta-cognitively, motivationally, and behaviorally active participants in their own learning processes (Zimmerman, 1986).

The present research-intervention aims at examining the communication process between Sicilian teenagers, their parents and their teachers within the context of the Sicilian territory. The research has been focused o the perception educators have of teenagers’ educational needs, in particular those concerning study difficulties. A training methodology has been tested with 454 teenage students, to support and implement individual study and improve communication with their parents.

In particular, the biennial (2011 -2013) research project has been articulated into two actions: a) the exploratory investigation in order to collect data on the educational needs of teen-agers; b) the formative intervention on the learning strategies and on the communication in the family in order to promote an effective dialogue between teen-agers and their parents.

Keywords:

Communication, metacognitive competence, self-regulation.