Abstract:

In today’s education, a major shift towards educational institutions that focus on understanding rather than on contents is taking place. And among the different initiatives aimed at this goal, the Teaching for Understanding (TfU) framework is becoming more and more commonplace; however, its implementation in the context of initial teacher training is definitely less frequent.

Actually, little has been researched about the convenience of making soon-to-become teachers familiar with this pedagogical approach. The aim of this research is to establish the different factors to be taken into account when deciding to work according to the principles of such framework in the context of initial training and how it contributes to improve the overall process.

The present research focuses on the perspective given by two different yet deeply related sources: teachers working in Primary Education and experts on the TfU framework belonging to Project Zero (Harvard University, Boston, MA). More precisely, the former were asked to give their view on to what extent the use of this pedagogical proposal enhances the training of students who will soon become teachers and the latter were asked to assess the suitability of its adoption in Higher Education.

The results show that, even if working with the TfU framework is a demanding task, the role it can play in the training process is remarkable, contributing to a more profound understanding of what teaching is about.

Keywords:

Teaching for understanding, initial teacher training, higher education, project zero.