General Info
"Elements in brief" is an example of 3-year educational plan that every Italian school has to develop and update every year by law in order to adapt the general national guidelines to their local communities real educational needs. Schools benefit of a large autonomy in deciding their own local educational policies.
It is the first vertical design action of the “Istituto Comprensivo Manzoni-Poli” (primary and secondary school) that aims to create a mutual path for the building of a competent, hospitable and world-open community.
The “competence” concept is defined as a blend of “knowledge, skills and attitudes” which means "disposition/mentality to act or react to ideas, people, situations”.
That concept, indeed, represents a full awareness of the need to activate training actions capable of develop connections and overlaps among the different sectors and through the recognition of an intrinsic potential that leads each competence to reach other fields of cultural and relational experience.
STEAM education is considered a strategic asset to be developed by specific projects, tailored for kids of primary schools and the first cycle of secondary school.
Applicability and Audience
Details
Based on the deep and recently economic, social and cultural changes and on the persistence of serious difficulties in developing the basic skills of young people, the need of greater of entrepreneurial, social and civic skills is growing “to ensure resilience and ability to adapt to change”.
On a practical level, that mostly means an effort to create a strong interrelation between formal and non-formal learning and the need of a regular support to teaching staff for the introduction of new and innovative teaching methods.
Therefore, this process should be accompained by values as sustainability, respect for human rights, gender equality, solidarity and inclusion, non-violent culture, cultural diversity and global citizenship principle.
- Education for competent, active and responsible partecipation
- Focus on students and theachers with the aim of a continue and mutal improvement supporting and orienting by the system assessment and self-assessment.
- Focus on active citizenship with a cross-cutting skills promotion on the students in a learning inclusive enviroment.
Starting from that, the development of a focus on communication competences (multilingualism), personal and social competence (learning to learn) and the citizen competence is an un urgent need. Last but not least, the policy encourage an enhancement of young STEM skills, supporting a closer realationship between formal learning, creativity and lab experiences (overcoming the gender inequality noted in this sector).
It’s evident that the curiosity and the ability to relate to "the other" (understood as person, context, culture, diversity), combined with critical thinking and resilience are values increasingly central.
- The development of skills and learning experiences
- the spread of learning paths useful to set up a dynamic archive of good practices
- The building of a friendly, open to hosting students' languages and expressive diversity enviroment
- The creation of an equal and inclusive school
- The organization and collection of the teaching practices in the vertical curriculum.
- The promotion of individual skills (teachers, students and families) and talents.
- The reinforcement of the sharing practices with families and territory.
Four programs are dedicated specifically to the "STEAM Dimension":
- Transalpine mathematical rally
- Let's do Science (Scienziamo)
- Coding
- The voice of children and kids
1. Guideline dimension: horizontal and vertical continuity
2. Healt and well being dimension: socio-affective education, education to affectivity and sexuality, psychologists in schools, harmonies for health at school, we, citizens in the world.
3. Active citizenship dimension: action plan for the prevention and the fight against cyberbullying, "a fairytale Constitution" project, activities with Libera association.
4. European dimension: English and French language enhancement
5. Sports education: sport in classroom, sport and disabilities
6. STEAM dimension: Scienziamo Project, coding
Special attention is dedicated to monitoring and evaluation as fundamental tools for makind educated decisions about future educational plans. The main tool is the analysis of data coming from the INVALSI tests. INVALSI is the National Institute for Evaluation of the Educational and Training System. It is a public organisation controlled by the Ministry of Education, who by law carries out periodic and systematic checks on students' knowledge and skills and on the overall quality of the educational offer of education and vocational education and training institutions, also in the context of lifelong learning.
- Use the criticalities that emerged in reading the INVALSI data as an opportunity to reflect on how to RE-ORIENT the didactic planning and allow a progressive improvement of the results in standardized tests.
- Creation of training seminars for teachers and school system actors engaged in evaluation activities by external experts and university researchers in the field of
evaluation of the school system in order to arrive at a shared path of tools and methodologies.
- Reading and interpretation of the data returned by INVALSI for primary and lower secondary school in the light of the "National Indications and New Scenarios" and the INVALSI Reference Frameworks for Italian and mathematics and the EQCR frames for English.
- Identification of the strengths and criticalities that emerged from the return of INVALSI data
- Use of the different items to exercise metacognition and build a metacognitive path carried out in daily school work.
Educational Material/Resources
English