Research interest

My main research interest regards assessment in mathematics; in particular, it is aimed at analysing students’ behaviour when they deal with tasks administered in different environments paper and pencil and computer (Lemmo, 2021; 2020; 2019; 2017 and 2015; Lemmo and Mariotti, 2017; Lemmo and Bolondi 2016). To move in this direction, it is not sufficient to study results collected from the tests, but it is necessary to have tools to investigate in a detailed manner students’ approach when dealing with a task administered in different environments (Bolondi and Lemmo, 2016).

The starting point for this work is to clarify/define what is meant by comparable tasks/tests regardless of the administration environment. From the perspective of comparison, switching from one administration environment to another requires continuity, i.e. conformity in the information provided by the statistical processing of results according to the resources that are activated and the strategies and heuristics that can be used by the solver in identifying these results. In this perspective, the analyses developed in my studies clearly show the complexity of this topic by highlighting how transformations that at first glance appear to be completely insignificant may in fact conceal significant consequences (Lemmo, 2021, 2020, 2019; Lemmo and Mariotti, 2017; Bolondi and Lemmo, 2016). The migration of a task from one environment to another is neither simple nor guaranteed in its neutrality, it increasingly justifies investing in the study of the new methodologies of Computer-based Testing (CBT) by investigating the specific potential that different devices offer (Lemmo, 2020; 2019).

The study on the comparability of the tasks in the two environments is combined with several qualitative studies on students’ behaviour when faced with such tasks. The study is develop on a sample of secondary school students and it shows how the difference in environment leads solvers to use different mathematical resources and adopt different control and assessment strategies (Lemmo, second step review).

This research has a strong impact on teacher training; I developed several training and research training courses on the topic with teachers of all grades. In addition, from 2019 to 2022 it was the main theme of the PON-AIM project (1849353 - 3) on funds allocated by MIUR for the Department of Human Sciences of the University of L'Aquila