October 3, 2025 – 1:00 p.m. On-site and online session (Room M204, Faculty of Psychology and Speech Therapy). Language: English.
Chiara Magurno
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
Reading comprehension is an essential skill that enables individuals to be active and informed participants in society. Within the school context, it plays a central role in the development of knowledge and competences that are crucial for educational success. In this scenario, the process of digitalization inevitably extends to reading, raising new and significant educational challenges. In particular, children’s exposure to screen reading prompts questions about the quality of comprehension and the mental stance with which they approach texts. Recent research has shown that digital reading is often associated with a rapid and superficial approach, with negative effects on deep comprehension.
This study aims to investigate whether, and to what extent, an interactive conversational support system can foster deep comprehension in digital environments. This talk introduces CLAIRE (Conversational Literacy Agent Integrating Reflective Engagement & AI), an AI-based conversational agent designed to support reading comprehension in primary school students. CLAIRE engages students in comprehension strategies: prediction, clarification, questioning, summarization, and inference, and using non-evaluative, dialogic feedback. Its design builds on Reciprocal Teaching (Palincsar & Brown, 1984) and on Lumbelli’s dialogic model (2009), which highlights guided dialogue and metacognitive reflection as key conditions for comprehension.
The quasi-experimental study includes fourth-grade classrooms assigned to four conditions: a control group with traditional comprehension practices, and three experimental groups with structured print reading, unsupported digital reading, and digital reading supported by CLAIRE. Crucially, the project follows the Italian tradition of research–training (Bertolini, 2018), a collaborative process of workshops, co-design of tools and cycles of observation and reflection. In this way, CLAIRE is embedded within professional practice rather than introduced as an external tool.
The talk will present the theoretical framework, research methodology, and illustrative interactions, showing how conversational agents can mediate between digital reading challenges and the goals of reflective comprehension.
Bio
Chiara Magurno is a PhD Fellow in the International Industrial PhD in Reggio Childhood Studies at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (UNIMORE) and Fondazione Reggio Children. She holds a Single-Cycle Master’s Degree in Primary Education, a Postgraduate Specialization in Educational Support for Children with Disabilities, and a Master’s in Autism and Developmental Disorders. Her main research interest is children’s reading comprehension, together with research on how children learn with and about AI in educational settings. In her doctoral work, she explores how an AI-based conversational agent can support young learners in developing cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies in digital contexts.
