Notebooks and coloured pencils, the emotion of meeting a teacher and other classmates: it's the first day of school, an event that most children both await with anticipation and fear. When they start pre-school and then elementary school activities, for the first time youngsters leave the sheltered, safe world of their families and enter a new, varied reality that will represent an extremely important part of their childhood experience. How do schools cope with their mission of contributing to young children's authentic learning experience? An authoritative scholar of Italian developmental psychology, the author of this volume reviews each stage of the schooling process, from pre-schooling to the end of elementary instruction, highlighting both its pleasant and more troublesome features. Focusing on the cognitive, affective, social and moral aspects of childhood development, the text is targeted at both teachers (who will find useful educational advice) and parents and aims to assist them in helping each other guarantee children a more effective learning adventure.

Guido Petter teaches Psychology of Adolescence at the University of Padua.