Other research interests

Standardised assessment

Participation in the public competition "Ideas for Research" announced by INVALSI has allowed me to develop a collaboration between mathematics and statistics whose studies have been presented in national (Bolondi et al. 2016) and international (Lemmo et al., 2015; Branchetti et al. 2015) conferences. Starting from these works, more detailed studies on particular tasks have also been developed (Ferretti, Lemmo e Maffia, 2016 and 2015; Lemmo e Maffia, 2015).

For several years, I have been working with INVALSI as member of “grade 05 group”. From this collaboration, various research interests are developed, aimed at using INVALSI tests as a tool for research in mathematics education and for teacher training. In particular, I develop:

• a study about probability based on the INVALSI test evidences and data collected (Ferretti, Lemmo e Martignone, 2017);
• a study on the intertwine between qualitative and quantitative methodologies starting from data collected by INVALSI (Ferretti, Giberti e Lemmo, 2018; 2019);

During the three years of my PhD, I had the opportunity to be hosted for two months at SUPSI in Locarno where I worked on the results of the standardized assessment in mathematics of the Canton Ticino; from this work, some considerations related the understanding of the text in mathematics problems emerge (Franchini, Lemmo and Sbaragli, 2017).

Attitudes towards Mathematics and its teaching

The teaching activities carried out in Msc of Primary Education in Bologna and L’Aquila allow me to develop a number of research interests in preservice teacher education. In particular, research has been developed on the relationship between the sense of self-efficacy and emotions of preservice teachers in pre-school and primary schools (Maffia, Tisbeni, Ferretti, & Lemmo, 2020; Ciani, Ferretti, Lemmo, Maffia and Provitera, 2019; Ciani, Ferretti, Lemmo and Maffia, second step review). On this topic, I was the scientific coordinator of a project of the University of L’Aquila for basic research and research start-up 2021-2022. The project was submitted in the call for proposals Rep. No. 445-2021 Prot. no. 53289 of 29/04/2021 and was awarded (Rep. no. 786 of 13/07/2021 Prot. no. 80798 Class. III/13: https://www.univaq.it/include/utilities/blob.php?item=file&table=allegato&id=5228). The project aimed to investigate which factors of an affective nature influence the training of teachers, focusing on tenured teachers (from the Abruzzo region) and future teachers (students of the university) of each school grade, with the objective of studying the evolution of these attitudes during in-service and pre-service training (Ciani, Ferretti, Lemmo, Maffia & Provitera, 2019). This objective has a strong repercussion on the university's teaching as it can be the starting point for designing and implementing effective training practices for the development of positive attitudes towards mathematics and its teaching.

Postgraduate teaching

In these years, I was advisor of some MSc in Mathematics and Primary Education students. Some research reveals interesting data that have been published. In particular, we present a study for assessing mathematical problem solving in primary school (Bartolini, Bolondi and Lemmo, 2018) and a study for comparing task layout in some INVALSI tests (Garzetti and Lemmo, 2019).

The opportunity to coordinate a PhD thesis allowed me to explore the possibility of using a video game for learning in some schools in the province of L'Aquila. In this case, the technology seems to support the teacher in orchestrating effective discussions (Lemmo & Scafa, 2021) and activating scaffolding strategies (Lemmo & Scafa, in press).