Anna Salerni

Anna Salerni is Full Professor at the Department of Social Psychology, Developmental Psychology and Educational Research, Sapienza University of Rome. Since the start of her career she has combined research, teaching and institutional service, focusing on the intersection between university education and the professional world, with particular attention to pedagogy, orientation and evaluation.

Her educational background and early scholarly work lie in pedagogy and educational measurement, which she has continuously expanded through numerous national and international projects (IEA/SAL, IEA Civic Education, OECD/PISA, MIUR, IRRE/INVALSI).

Research interests

Professor Salerni’s current studies revolve around:

• The university–work transition and reflective traineeships as a bridge between academic learning and professional practice.
• Training of company tutors who mentor students during internships.
• Citizenship and human-rights education, and the development of key transversal competences.
• Language education, including reading comprehension, lexical competence and written-text production.
• Assessment methodologies, construction and validation of survey instruments, and large-scale educational evaluation.
• Intergenerational and inclusive education, with recent attention to neurodiversity.

These strands are tightly interwoven: she investigates how reflective practices and narrative methods can enhance professional growth, while simultaneously developing robust tools to measure learning outcomes and programme quality.

Publication trends

Over the last three years her output has concentrated on three macro-areas:

• Experiential and reflective learning – analysing university internships, Human Library orientation practices, and critical-incident strategies.
• Inclusive pedagogy and neurodiversity – proposing ethical and methodological principles for welcoming cognitive diversity in educational contexts.
• Professional development and career guidance – mapping training paths for educators and the evolving landscape of educational professions.

Scientific awards

The provided material does not list specific prizes or medals conferred upon Professor Salerni.

Training, supervision & grants

Professor Salerni has designed and delivered continuous professional-development courses for in-service and pre-service teachers, social and health workers, and company tutors. She coordinates internship programmes within the Education Sciences degrees at Sapienza, developing monitoring tools and reflective-writing protocols. While explicit grant numbers are not supplied, her participation in OECD, IEA and MIUR projects indicates sustained external funding for large-scale educational research.

Laboratories & teams

She operates from Villa Mirafiori, Room 113a, leading a research group that focuses on traineeship innovation, assessment design, and inclusive pedagogy. The team collaborates with regional schools, enterprises and public bodies to pilot new training models and to refine evaluation instruments.