ICT E LIVELLI DI APPRENDIMENTO NELLA SCUOLA PRIMARIA: UN’ANALISI SULL’IMPATTO DELLA LIM IN CLASSE

[Autom. eng. transl.] Thanks to the growing diffusion of ICT in the educational field, the scholastic experience of students seems to contribute more and more actively to the construction of their digital skills. Less clear, on the other hand, is the relationship between the use of these technologies and returns in curriculum subjects such as Italian or mathematics. This article focuses on the Multimedia Interactive Whiteboard (LIM), a device on which substantial public investments have been made over the last few years. Using an original database, the result of the union between the Teacher Questionnaire and the 2013-2014 INVALSI standardized tests, we estimate the effects of the presence of an IWB in the classroom on the scholastic performances of the pupils in the second grade of primary school education. This work has two main advantages over most of the previous literature on the subject. First, it exploits a broad and statistically representative national sample, endowed with a considerable degree of external validity. Secondly, it monitors a broad set of characteristics of the students, teachers, classes and schools involved, potentially capable of distorting the IWB impact estimates. The analyzes include alternative models for estimating the impact of the IWB on Italian and mathematics test results (at individual and class levels), combining multivariate regression techniques and statistical matching (Propensity Score Matching). The results agree in showing a null effect of the IWB on the students' school performance, questioning the legitimacy of the huge public investments aimed at its introduction in the initial years of primary school. In the concluding paragraph of the article the limits of the analyzes carried out are discussed, formulating recommendations for future evaluations more robust and functional to the choices of investment by the public decision maker.