Abstract:

On-line learning has been considered a valid tool in favouring the education of “weak” individuals, such as women, immigrants as well as prison inmates. In particular as regards the latter, there have been in Europe, in recent years, several projects supported by European or national funds. However, as it was outlined in the European meeting “Pathways to social inclusion” (Budapest, February 2010), there are not systematic data “on the implementation and distribution of e-learning provision in prisons […] there is no overview of how many prisons offer ePathways to Inclusion […] and how many participants take up this offer […]. There is also no systematic knowledge about the implementation or evaluation of e-learning”. The collection of systematic information on these various aspects is therefore a major priority for the development of the area.
This article stems from a Grundtvig 2009 learning partnership project, EEPP-Elearning education for prisoners and prisoners professionals, to be completed in August 2011. It is coordinated by the Dipartimento di Sociologia e scienza della politica of the University of Salerno (Italy), while the partners are the Istituto di reclusione ICATT of Eboli (Italy), the Centrul de Reeducare of Buzias (Romania), and Praxiling UMR 5267 Université de Montpellier3-CNRS (France). EEPP objectives are to establish and develop a dialogue between the organizational and managerial staff of prisons and teachers engaged in working with prisoners on the use of ICT and distance learning in prison; to create, also, a community of trainers able to talk continuously on these issues as well as to be the sponsor of new learning opportunities and the reintegration into society of persons at risk of exclusion. A meeting of the project (Timisoara, March 2010) has been dedicated to illustrate the situation of the partner’s countries with reference to the spread of e-learning education into the prisons, in order to identify good practices to be proposed on the project final guidelines and recommendations. This article presents the french and italian experiences and proposes a few more general considerations.
In Italy the inquiry concentrated on four elearning educational experiences, conducted from 2005 to 2010, seeking information through direct contact with actors and promoters: the @URORA project,the Trio-Porto Azzurro Project, the University of Tor Vergata and the Carcere di Rebibbia (Roma) Project, the University of Modena e Reggio Project. In short, two of them relate to higher education, one is aimed at children and vocational education, the last provides modular courses at various levels.
In France, the inquiry selected two measures of Researche-Action, based on the ethnography of innovation processes, still in progress. The first, directly linked to the Grundtvig project and called « Interactions in Teaching and Educational Technologies in prison », the other involving monitoring operation of a Cyber-base® in the project RAUDIN (Praxiling Bordeaux III, financed by the FEDER and Aquitaine Region). The first research takes place in a Central Maximum Security Prison,the second in a Minimum Security Institution. The two interventions seek to identify and propose innovative teaching practices leaned back against ethnographic observation. The article analyzes in detail these different national experiences seeking to identify limitations and strenghts of the specific contexts.

Keywords:

e-learning in prison, Italy-France, social inclusion.