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  • Call for Paper and Submission. Year 5 No. 2/August, 2025

    2024-07-19

    The challenges and opportunities of evaluation: from theory to practice.

    This thematic Special Issue aims to collect contributions focused on evaluation, in various sectors such as education, training and labour, with reference to both the policies defined and implemented at national, regional and local level and by the stakeholders involved, as well as the operational declinations and practices.

    The topic of policy evaluation occupies an important role in the national and European agenda. With the awareness that it is possible to decline “evaluation” into specific activities that respond to different logics, this thematic edition aims to focus on what is common, i.e. the final objective: acquiring knowledge useful for finalizing the planning of future policies and actions.

    If the evaluation activity responds to a constant need of knowledge, the question of the availability of resources and the contextual increase, particularly in some policy areas, of the number of interventions to be implemented, has made more and more pressing the need to acquire useful information, in order to better allocate the available resources, after having analyzed the quality of the interventions and the tools used for their implementation.

    The centrality that the evaluation question is assuming, in increasingly differentiated areas of the country's life, the existence of multiple ways of understanding evaluation and the presence of even very heterogeneous practices, stimulate interest in the topic and make it the object of attention in many disciplinary fields.

    This edition aims to collect both contributions with a theoretical approach and contributions with analysis of experiences in the fields of interest, with both qualitative and quantitative approaches.

    Read more about Call for Paper and Submission. Year 5 No. 2/August, 2025

  • Call for Paper and Submission. Year 5 No. 1/April, 2025

    2024-04-05

    Human-centric approach to Artificial Intelligence

    The Call Human-centric approach to Artificial Intelligence aims to bring together studies and reflections on the potential and risks of Artificial Intelligence (AI) developments. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a very generic and broad concept encompassing various specific technologies, such as machine learning, neural networks and deep learning, applied to different fields of research, experimentation and scientific activities (from medicine to education, engineering to finance, etc.).
    Recent discussions on the possibility of somewhat unexpected or 'emergent' outcomes associated with AI have to do mainly with generative AI, with deep learning in neural networks (inspired by the structure of the human brain), as these refer to generic structures that do not incorporate predetermined rules or decision trees (or other tools such as genetic algorithms) but have to be trained on consistent data sets to eventually produce appropriate results (Higuera 2023).
    The likelihood that incomplete and distorted information, fake news, and misinformation can backfire, producing a “magnification” effect through generative AI, can be unpredictable. Some, such as historian Yuval Noah Harari, believe that AI poses a danger because, by appropriating language and the ability to create stories, it could “hack” human civilisation and lead to its destruction (Harari 2023).
    The public and institutional discourse on these issues poses important questions to national and supranational legislation by reigniting the debate between preventive security needs, privacy rights, and risks of mass public surveillance. The growing expectations on artificial intelligence go hand in hand with a reduction of trust in human rationality, judged to be prey to emotions or 'weak thinking'- a 'limited rationality' incapable of dealing with complex situations (Ardigò 1988).
    Starting from these premises, the Call Human-centric approach to Artificial Intelligence intends to stimulate a reflection on the challenges and risks in the developments of artificial intelligence, starting from a central question that guides the reasoning on these issues: what are the limits for its ecological and human sustainability? Therefore, the academic community is invited to submit contributions aimed at investigating, from an inter-, multi- and trans-disciplinary perspective, the ethical, social, cultural and economic implications for human security related to AI developments and applications, as well as the transformations and impacts on society, in particular on educational institutions, to safeguard the freedom and well-being of individuals and communities.

    Read more about Call for Paper and Submission. Year 5 No. 1/April, 2025