New Educational Technologies and Their Impact on Students' Well-being and Inclusion Process

In the new millennium, education is rapidly changing due to the more and more pervasive use of technology to support teaching and learning. New Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), such as internet, wikis, blogs, search engines, emails and instant messaging require new literacy frameworks and new contexts for learning and life. A digital approach to education implies pursuing new goals and considering new theoretical models. However, many teachers and, more generally, professionals in the education field appear to resist overtly or covertly to this transformation and refuse to include such new learning and communication tools in their daily work. This may reflect a sort of diffidence towards new tools that they probably master to a lesser level than their students. Furthermore, it also indicates an insufficient understanding of the positive role that such media and tools could play in the process of knowledge acquisition and transmission, and of the role that they may play in fostering social exchange and integration in the classroom context and, more specifically, for students with learning or motivation problems.

This Research Topic is aimed at highlighting the impact new technologies can exert on students’ adaptation and well-being in everyday school life, both in terms of facilitating the learning process and in terms of sustaining self-esteem and self-efficacy feelings. Additionally, we want to examine the role ICT might play in promoting the integration of students with learning and motivation difficulties coming from different backgrounds. This collection aims to highlight the findings on this topic from the Italian educational context, inviting contributions that were initially presented at the Final Congress of the IBIS project (Innovative Technologies for Well-being and Inclusion at School), that took place at Bicocca University, Milan, on June 14th, 2019.

Authors are invited to focus their contributions on an integrated vision of the complex interplay between students’ attitudes and academic skills, educational settings, and ICT tools, in order to shed light on the impact of new technologies on developmental processes. More specifically, we are interested in manuscripts reporting original, quantitative data on new technologies (ICT tools, use of web sources, and innovative teaching approaches including flipped classrooms, experiences with classroom 3.0 organization, etc.) and on their relationships with the students’ abilities, school achievement, engagement, self-concept and peer relations.