Maria TOMARCHIO

"Last update 31/01/2021)

Maria Tomarchio (n. 20-06-1959), Via Gobetti n.16, 95014, Giarre (CT), Italy , telephone +39-095-7794745;Mobile:+39-3931232014 maria.tomarchio@unict.it  www.mariatomarchio.it. 

Full Professor of General and Social Pedagogy (SSD M- Ped / 01) at the Department of Education Sciences of the University of Catania.

- Since the academic yes 2012/2013 she is the Programme leader of the master’s degree in Pedagogical Sciences and Educational Planning (LM85).  

- Rector Delegate (DR n. 3731 of 03.10.2017) for the Coordination of the activities aimed at the implementation of the training courses for the acquisition of the 24 CFU in relation to the DM n.616 / 2017;

- Member of the “Inter-university Committee” for the Inter-university degree course at the Kore University of Enna - Psychological sciences and techniques (NR of 29/06/2007, prot. 41383);

- Coordinator of the PhD Fondamenti e metodi dei processi formativi at the University of Catania, from the academic years 2001/2002 to 2010/2011;

- Coordinator of the Pedagogical and Psychological Sciences section within the International Research Doctorate in Neuroscience of the University of Catania, from the academic years 2011/2012 to 2012/2013;

- Vice-coordinator of the Research Doctorate Training processes, theoretical-transformative models and research methods applied to the territory of the Department of Education Sciences of the University of Catania from the year 2019 (cycle XXXV);

- Member of various Doctoral Colleges from 2012 to 2018;

- Director of the Master in Organization and management of educational institutions in multicultural contexts, a project which was co-financed by the European Union, ASYLUM, MIGRATION AND INTEGRATION (FAMI) Fund 2014-2020, in collaboration with MIUR and CUNSF (National University Conference of the Departments of Education Sciences);

- Scientific Coordinator of the in-service teacher training course aimed at the schools of the FAMI network through the SOFIA-MIUR platform  Multicultural school contexts: research-action and educational-didactic planning for Interculture (from 19/02/2019 to 31/05/2019 );  

- Member of the Technical-Scientific Committee of the Regional Center for Research, Experimentation and Development - Sicily (art 28, paragraph 2, letter b of DM 663/2016; DPR 263/2012; DI 12.3.2015);

- Since 2018 Member of the University Scientific Advisory Group of the National Network of Regional Centers of Research, Experimentation and Development for Adult Education;

- Member of the Joint Commission for teaching of the Department of Education Sciences of the University of Catania, from 2012 to 2017.

- Coordinator of the Internship activities at the school of specialization in secondary education (Sissis) aimed at the training of teachers of first and second grade secondary schools, from  2001; 

- Coordinator of the Area for the Training of the Teaching Function of the school of specialization in secondary education (Sissis), aimed at the training of teachers of secondary schools of first and second grade, since 2001;

- Coordinator of the Special university course for teachers of kindergarten and primary school without qualification or teaching qualification (law 4 June 2004 n. 143; DM 85 of 18 November 2005, art. 2, paragraph 1) ;

- Coordinator (2014) of the university course in professional updating Citizenship, constitution, environment in school intercultural practice - INPS management of public employees in collaboration with Unict - Department of political and social sciences.

 

PRIN and scientific coordination

- Coordinator of the research group at the University of Catania PRIN 2003 (co-financed) Images of the youth training model between the two world wars in eastern Sicily.

- Research Participant in the PRIN 2005 research program (co-financed ) with the University of Rome Tor Vergata: Adult education between the two World wars in the eastern Sicily.

- Coordination of the Research Group at the University of Catania for PRIN 2007 : Dal sistema formativo integrato al soggetto polisistemico: nuove prospettive per la formazione degli insegnanti. analisi storico-comparativa, modelli teorici, temi e figure di riferimento.

- Coordination of the Research Group at the University of Catania for PRIN 2008. Nel labirinto della formazione integrata: pratiche formative e soggetto polisistemico. Metafore, ricombinazioni, ibridazioni identitarie, nuovi orizzonti nella ricerca pedagogica alla luce delle più recenti tecnologie di rete.

- Research Participant for the PRIN 2010/11 (co-funded) research program - University of Rome 'La Sapienza': Educational success, inclusion and social cohesion: innovative strategies, ICT and evaluation models.

- Principal Investigator of the Nature-Culture Interdepartmental Research Group. Link Educational Design, Integrated Learning Process, Landscapes   

(www.fir2014.unict.it/ University of Catania - Research Area. Project Code 294E64).  

- Coordination of the Research Unit at the University of Catania for the PRIN 2015: Generations bridge. Training processes, identity paths and intercultural dialogue between second generations, territories and memories.

- Coordinator (2017) of the Research Group at the University of Catania - Hostis-Hospes Project. connecting people for a Europe of diversities (Program Rec - Rights, Equality and Citizenship work program - call REC-VAW-AG-2016-02Round 1 - CUP n. J15E17000000006). The project focuses on intercultural practices carried out in formal and informal Sicilian educational contexts and on the concept of inclusion of foreign minors. It was aimed at encouraging the development of multi-ethnic society models for a European Union “United in diversity” and, in particular, it was aimed at identifying, promoting and disseminating a “Sicilian Model” for intercultural dialogue and social inclusion of foreign minors.    

- Research participant in the PRIN 2017 research program of the Kore University of Enna (co-funded) REsearch at the SERvice of Educational fragilitiesS (RE-SERVES).

 

Awards and recognitions

- 18/05/2009 1st prize “Sant'Alfio fonte di pace” (Club Unesco of Acireale) 

Motivation: For the commitment and dedication in the field of education to spread the culture of peace.
 

- 01/10/2016 Francesco Saverio Nitti International Prize for the Mediterranean (Suor Orsola Benincasa University of Naples and the Acquafredda School of Life Association of Maratea) for the book Tomarchio M., D’Aprile G., La terra come luogo di cura educativa in Sicilia. Metafore e tracce nel tempo, Acireale, Bonanno Editore, 2014.
 

 

For her recognized scientific skills, she also held different positions:

- President of the Research and Documentation Center for Sicily / Europe Paolo Borsellino from 2011 to 2015 (Vice-President since 2015) http://centropaoloborsellino.wordpress.com/ ; 

- President of the Orti di Pace Association - Sicily (www.ortidipacesicilia.org) since 2009. The Association works in the field of the labor, environmental education, food and intercultural. A network of Sicilian educational institutes operates within the association;

- Member of the Technical Scientific Committee of Proteo Fare Sapere (Training Center) Sicily, Palermo, since 2014;

- Member of the Scientific Committee of the Ionic - Montessori Association of Taranto, since 2015;

- Appointed member of the Selection Committee of the National Competition Quel fresco profumo di libertà funded by MIUR and Center for Studies, research and documentation Sicily / Europe Paolo and Rita Borsellino. III edition (2016), fourth edition (2017);

- Member of the Scientific Committee of the CIRNM Francesco Saverio Nitti International Research Center for the Mediterranean since 2019;

 

 Teaching responsibilities:

• Pedagogical Design Models and Educational Policies (Master's Degree Program in Pedagogical Sciences and Educational Planning), 
• General Pedagogy and Childhood Education (Bachelor’s Degree in Education and Training Sciences)
•  Theory, Methods and Design for environmental Education (Master’s Degree Program in educational Science - Curriculum  B environmental Education and territory),
• General Pedagogy (Degree Program in Sciences and techniques of physical activities, preventive and adapted). 

Over the years he has also taught Pedagogy of learning, Experimental pedagogy, Pedagogy and media education, Intercultural pedagogy, Philosophy of education.

Since the Academic year 2000/2001 he has regularly taught at the SISSIS (Sicilian Interuniversity School of Specialization for Secondary Teaching). Since 2001 he has regularly held lectures and in-depth seminars also within the activities of various Doctorate Programme Courses. In 2015 she was a teacher at the CoPED R-Urban Regeneration summer school organized by the University of Catania in collaboration with the University of Memphis;

 

Teaching activity abroad:

- During the Academic Year 2008/09 she was a Visiting Professor at the University of Seville, as part of the Lifelong Learning Program TS mobility between the University of Catania and the University of Seville. He held a cycle of lectures on the topic El modelo del sistema formative integrade in Italy at the 4^th Curso de la Licenciatura de Pedagogia of the Faculty of Ciencias de la Educación;

- In the Academic Year 2008/09 she held a series of study seminars on the topic La educaciòn nueva y la escuela activa en Europa at the University of Seville for the Research Doctorate in Educaciòn and social change of the Department of Theory, Historia de la educaciòn y Pedagogia Social.

- In 2017, she was invited by the Department of Education Leadership, Management, and Policy of Seton Hall University (United States) where she held a cycle of lessons for the Curriculum Design and Evaluation course on the topics: Design Models; Pedagogical activism and evaluation; The Italian Reformation La Buona scuola;

 

Scientific-Educational activities:

She was speakers at numerous conferences, seminars, study days, training course for teachers on topics ranging from New Education and Active School to outdoor schools, from the teaching of the human sciences to teaching/learning practices, from teacher training to the wide range of issues related to human rights, from early school leaving to youth wellbeing, from environmental education to active democratic citizenship.

 

Scientific research directions:

• New Education and Active School in Italy and Europe. Models, themes, figures, with particular reference to the context of the Education Nouvelle.

• Education and outdoor school. Educational and didactic experimentation in Sicily

• Education, environment, territory and active democratic citizenship

 

• Theoretical models of the Education Nouvelle in France and the multiform experiences of empirical-experimental research carried out in the educational field in the French-speaking area between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. From the first investigation into the thought and work of Célestin Freinet it became clear that many Italian author’s treatises on his contribution were related often in an exclusive and therefore reductive form, to the most popular teaching techniques which he promoted. In the light of a careful reading of main important texts (not always present in Italian translation) there is remarkable the peculiarities of a reflection that retraces the "places" of the so-called classical pedagogy “activistic” , presenting an original character with regard to the dynamic-functional interpretation of psychic life and learning, to the democratic conception of human rights and powers, to cooperative practice and to the education of work. Maria Tomarchio wrote also two volumes that constitute a unique reference in Italy for field studies: 
• (Catania, CUECM, 1995), and New Education and Intellectuelle Culture. 

The first offers a new approach to Cousinet's thought and work , placing its contribution, for the first time in Italy, within a wide-ranging reconstruction that allows the reader to get out of the shadows, to place in their most significant relationship, the multiple contributions of the pedagogist to the French pedagogical renewal. The more the research has been deepened, the more and with increasing evidence it has emerged that in Italian there is no set of functional and supportive texts for the investigation. It is not surprising that a field which has long remained unexplored is notable for a serious shortage of texts available in Italian translation. In light of this awareness, the other volume takes shape, New Education and Culture intellectuelle (Catania, CUECM, 2003), also unique in Italy for the field of discussion, which was reviewed in the international journal « Paedagogica Historica ». 

The text contains the complete translation of the work of Roger Cousinet La Culture Intellectuelle (Paris, Les Presses d'Ile de France, 1954), almost unknown in Italy. The translation of the Cousinettian text provides a starting point for an in-depth investigation into the establishment, at secondary education level, of the Classes Nouvelles; which is an experience that draws inspiration from the planning and research work of the Commission for the Langevin-Wallon Plan and which takes its first steps in the immediate post-war period.  In december 2009, Maria Tomarchio organized in Catania an International Conference on New Education and Active School in Europe at the dawn of the twentieth century. Models, themes, figures, which took place at the Faculty of Education of the University of Catania. The event had a dual purpose, on the one hand, to consider the prism of experiences and ideas attributable to the origins of the New Education and Active School movement; at the same time undertake a critical analyst of the activism, important peculiarities and prerogatives of context. The Proceedings of the Conference have been published in two volumes, monographic issue of the magazine “The Problems of Pedagogy”, Vol. I n. 4/6 2010, vol. II no. 4/6 2011 (Rome, Anicia).

 

• As part of the National Interest Project on the theme “The formation of Italian youth between the Two World Wars for the construction of national identity” (2005) , the first reconstruction of the context of activity of the experimentation of the Royal Gymnasiums is placed in Sicily, which has brought to light unpublished sources of the early years of the twentieth century. On this field of study, particular effort was dedicated to the figure of Michele Crimi (1875-1963) as documented also during a photographic-documentary exhibition, Michele Crimi (1875-1963). Sicilian pedagogy unpublished pages held at the Department of Education which was open to the public from 27 September to 27 October 2006. In 2014 the interdepartmental project (Departments of Educational Sciences, Medicine and Surgery, Civil Engineering and Architecture) FIR Nature-culture axis. Educational design, integrated training system, configuration of the territory was implemented.

 

• The in-depth study of the issue of active democratic citizenship takes originality with particular reference to the notion of “memoria operante/working memory” which is gradually defined within a context of studies and research carried out relating to the contributions of the psycho-pedagogy of the French-speaking area.  She was inspired in particular by the pedagogical studies on contact operant of Jean Piaget.  With reference to Jean Piaget, the reference is to Piagetian sociological writings concerning individuality and the dynamics of the relationship between psychogenesis and sociogenesis, egocentric thought and sociocentric thought ( Piaget J., Sociological Studies, edited by Barbetta and Fornasa , Franco Angeli Publisher, Milan 1989 ) . These studies represent an interesting contribution to the reflection on the relationships between the individual, society and educational models, or rather between being individual and being social. The reciprocity, which Piaget defines as “the method of cooperation translated into logic”, therefore operates through contact operating in the direction of decentralization, allowing the ego to enter into a bargaining regime, to evolve through reflection, and therefore to mature in personality. From the reciprocity of minds develops a logic of relationships functional to the exercise of critical skills, an important source of rationality and self-regulation. A close link holds educational experience and social transformation processes together in a democratic and participatory sense. On the occasion of the conference Education and freedom in the present time. Paths, models, problems (Messina, 2006), Maria Tomarchio outlined as a condition of exercising being free, a dual-faced experience, which combines the expression of subjective abilities with the progressive projection/construction, outside the subject itself, of conditions suitable for being free (synthesis by operative contact). Such a perspective implies that what we call freedom never takes the form of an unlimited constellation of opportunities to act conceived in the abstract, rather connotes and implies relationships between historically and politically determined individuals, dialogues and intergenerational exchanges.
• Since 2000, she was called to report on the thought and work of the educator Leonardo Patane with whom she had long worked at the Faculty of Humanities of Catania. The close link between didactic practice and pedagogy has become a frame of reference on the occasion of the reconstruction of his thought in the volume Didactic practice and relational pedagogy. Studies in honor of Leonardo Roberto Patané (Rome, Armando, 2002). Through the contribution of illustrious pedagogists and Italian and foreign scholars, the work presents the perspective of a relational pedagogy which, in the perspective of a critical relationalism, is re-proposed as an interpretative key to frame the epistemological assumptions of pedagogy and the reasons for experimentalism and teaching practice in a relationship that is far from rigid systematic claims and technical illusions. For the Pedagogical Encyclopaedia (edited by Mauro Laeng, Brescia, La Scuola, 2003) the same pedagogist from Catania was asked to write. 

 

 

 

 

VIEW THE PUBLICATIONS

PRIN and scientific coordination

- Coordinator of the research group at the University of Catania PRIN 2003 (co-financed) Images of the youth training model between the two world wars in eastern Sicily.

- Research Participant in the PRIN 2005 research program (co-financed ) with the University of Rome Tor Vergata: Adult education between the two World wars in the eastern Sicily.

- Coordination of the Research Group at the University of Catania for PRIN 2007 : Dal sistema formativo integrato al soggetto polisistemico: nuove prospettive per la formazione degli insegnanti. analisi storico-comparativa, modelli teorici, temi e figure di riferimento.

- Coordination of the Research Group at the University of Catania for PRIN 2008. Nel labirinto della formazione integrata: pratiche formative e soggetto polisistemico. Metafore, ricombinazioni, ibridazioni identitarie, nuovi orizzonti nella ricerca pedagogica alla luce delle più recenti tecnologie di rete.

- Research Participant for the PRIN 2010/11 (co-funded) research program - University of Rome 'La Sapienza': Educational success, inclusion and social cohesion: innovative strategies, ICT and evaluation models.

- Principal Investigator of the Nature-Culture Interdepartmental Research Group. Link Educational Design, Integrated Learning Process, Landscapes   

(www.fir2014.unict.it/ University of Catania - Research Area. Project Code 294E64).  

- Coordination of the Research Unit at the University of Catania for the PRIN 2015: Generations bridge. Training processes, identity paths and intercultural dialogue between second generations, territories and memories.

- Coordinator (2017) of the Research Group at the University of Catania - Hostis-Hospes Project. connecting people for a Europe of diversities (Program Rec - Rights, Equality and Citizenship work program - call REC-VAW-AG-2016-02Round 1 - CUP n. J15E17000000006). The project focuses on intercultural practices carried out in formal and informal Sicilian educational contexts and on the concept of inclusion of foreign minors. It was aimed at encouraging the development of multi-ethnic society models for a European Union “United in diversity” and, in particular, it was aimed at identifying, promoting and disseminating a “Sicilian Model” for intercultural dialogue and social inclusion of foreign minors.    

- Research participant in the PRIN 2017 research program of the Kore University of Enna (co-funded) REsearch at the SERvice of Educational fragilitiesS (RE-SERVES).

 

 

 

Scientific-Educational activities:

She was speakers at numerous conferences, seminars, study days, training course for teachers on topics ranging from New Education and Active School to outdoor schools, from the teaching of the human sciences to teaching/learning practices, from teacher training to the wide range of issues related to human rights, from early school leaving to youth wellbeing, from environmental education to active democratic citizenship.

 

Scientific research directions:

• New Education and Active School in Italy and Europe. Models, themes, figures, with particular reference to the context of the Education Nouvelle.

• Education and outdoor school. Educational and didactic experimentation in Sicily

• Education, environment, territory and active democratic citizenship

 

• Theoretical models of the Education Nouvelle in France and the multiform experiences of empirical-experimental research carried out in the educational field in the French-speaking area between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. From the first investigation into the thought and work of Célestin Freinet it became clear that many Italian author’s treatises on his contribution were related often in an exclusive and therefore reductive form, to the most popular teaching techniques which he promoted. In the light of a careful reading of main important texts (not always present in Italian translation) there is remarkable the peculiarities of a reflection that retraces the "places" of the so-called classical pedagogy “activistic” , presenting an original character with regard to the dynamic-functional interpretation of psychic life and learning, to the democratic conception of human rights and powers, to cooperative practice and to the education of work. Maria Tomarchio wrote also two volumes that constitute a unique reference in Italy for field studies: 
• (Catania, CUECM, 1995), and New Education and Intellectuelle Culture. 

The first offers a new approach to Cousinet's thought and work , placing its contribution, for the first time in Italy, within a wide-ranging reconstruction that allows the reader to get out of the shadows, to place in their most significant relationship, the multiple contributions of the pedagogist to the French pedagogical renewal. The more the research has been deepened, the more and with increasing evidence it has emerged that in Italian there is no set of functional and supportive texts for the investigation. It is not surprising that a field which has long remained unexplored is notable for a serious shortage of texts available in Italian translation. In light of this awareness, the other volume takes shape, New Education and Culture intellectuelle (Catania, CUECM, 2003), also unique in Italy for the field of discussion, which was reviewed in the international journal « Paedagogica Historica ». 

The text contains the complete translation of the work of Roger Cousinet La Culture Intellectuelle (Paris, Les Presses d'Ile de France, 1954), almost unknown in Italy. The translation of the Cousinettian text provides a starting point for an in-depth investigation into the establishment, at secondary education level, of the Classes Nouvelles; which is an experience that draws inspiration from the planning and research work of the Commission for the Langevin-Wallon Plan and which takes its first steps in the immediate post-war period.  In december 2009, Maria Tomarchio organized in Catania an International Conference on New Education and Active School in Europe at the dawn of the twentieth century. Models, themes, figures, which took place at the Faculty of Education of the University of Catania. The event had a dual purpose, on the one hand, to consider the prism of experiences and ideas attributable to the origins of the New Education and Active School movement; at the same time undertake a critical analyst of the activism, important peculiarities and prerogatives of context. The Proceedings of the Conference have been published in two volumes, monographic issue of the magazine “The Problems of Pedagogy”, Vol. I n. 4/6 2010, vol. II no. 4/6 2011 (Rome, Anicia).

 

• As part of the National Interest Project on the theme “The formation of Italian youth between the Two World Wars for the construction of national identity” (2005) , the first reconstruction of the context of activity of the experimentation of the Royal Gymnasiums is placed in Sicily, which has brought to light unpublished sources of the early years of the twentieth century. On this field of study, particular effort was dedicated to the figure of Michele Crimi (1875-1963) as documented also during a photographic-documentary exhibition, Michele Crimi (1875-1963). Sicilian pedagogy unpublished pages held at the Department of Education which was open to the public from 27 September to 27 October 2006. In 2014 the interdepartmental project (Departments of Educational Sciences, Medicine and Surgery, Civil Engineering and Architecture) FIR Nature-culture axis. Educational design, integrated training system, configuration of the territory was implemented.

 

• The in-depth study of the issue of active democratic citizenship takes originality with particular reference to the notion of “memoria operante/working memory” which is gradually defined within a context of studies and research carried out relating to the contributions of the psycho-pedagogy of the French-speaking area.  She was inspired in particular by the pedagogical studies on contact operant of Jean Piaget.  With reference to Jean Piaget, the reference is to Piagetian sociological writings concerning individuality and the dynamics of the relationship between psychogenesis and sociogenesis, egocentric thought and sociocentric thought ( Piaget J., Sociological Studies, edited by Barbetta and Fornasa , Franco Angeli Publisher, Milan 1989 ) . These studies represent an interesting contribution to the reflection on the relationships between the individual, society and educational models, or rather between being individual and being social. The reciprocity, which Piaget defines as “the method of cooperation translated into logic”, therefore operates through contact operating in the direction of decentralization, allowing the ego to enter into a bargaining regime, to evolve through reflection, and therefore to mature in personality. From the reciprocity of minds develops a logic of relationships functional to the exercise of critical skills, an important source of rationality and self-regulation. A close link holds educational experience and social transformation processes together in a democratic and participatory sense. On the occasion of the conference Education and freedom in the present time. Paths, models, problems (Messina, 2006), Maria Tomarchio outlined as a condition of exercising being free, a dual-faced experience, which combines the expression of subjective abilities with the progressive projection/construction, outside the subject itself, of conditions suitable for being free (synthesis by operative contact). Such a perspective implies that what we call freedom never takes the form of an unlimited constellation of opportunities to act conceived in the abstract, rather connotes and implies relationships between historically and politically determined individuals, dialogues and intergenerational exchanges.
• Since 2000, she was called to report on the thought and work of the educator Leonardo Patane with whom she had long worked at the Faculty of Humanities of Catania. The close link between didactic practice and pedagogy has become a frame of reference on the occasion of the reconstruction of his thought in the volume Didactic practice and relational pedagogy. Studies in honor of Leonardo Roberto Patané (Rome, Armando, 2002). Through the contribution of illustrious pedagogists and Italian and foreign scholars, the work presents the perspective of a relational pedagogy which, in the perspective of a critical relationalism, is re-proposed as an interpretative key to frame the epistemological assumptions of pedagogy and the reasons for experimentalism and teaching practice in a relationship that is far from rigid systematic claims and technical illusions. For the Pedagogical Encyclopaedia (edited by Mauro Laeng, Brescia, La Scuola, 2003) the same pedagogist from Catania was asked to write. 

For her recognized scientific skills, she also held different positions:

- President of the Research and Documentation Center for Sicily / Europe Paolo Borsellino from 2011 to 2015 (Vice-President since 2015)  http://centropaoloborsellino.wordpress.com/ ; 

- President of the Orti di Pace Association - Sicily (www.ortidipacesicilia.org) since 2009. The Association works in the field of the labor, environmental education, food and intercultural. A network of Sicilian educational institutes operates within the association;

- Member of the Technical-Scientific Committee of the Regional Center for Research, Experimentation and Development - Sicily (art 28, paragraph 2, letter b of DM 663/2016; DPR 263/2012; DI 12.3.2015);

- Since 2018 Member of the University Scientific Advisory Group of the National Network of Regional Centers of Research, Experimentation and Development for Adult Education;

- Member of the Technical Scientific Committee of Proteo Fare Sapere (Training Center) Sicily, Palermo, since 2014;

- Member of the Scientific Committee of the Ionic - Montessori Association of Taranto, since 2015;

- Appointed member of the Selection Committee of the National Competition Quel fresco profumo di libertà funded by MIUR and Center for Studies, research and documentation Sicily / Europe Paolo and Rita Borsellino. III edition (2016), fourth edition (2017);

- Member of the Scientific Committee of the CIRNM Francesco Saverio Nitti International Research Center for the Mediterranean since 2019;

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