IN SERVICE TEACHERS´ TRAINING: BETWEEN GOOD PRACTICES AND INNOVATIVE MODELS

The Law 107/15 called “Buona Scuola” reawakened in the Italian educational context the discussion about the professional training of in-service teachers. Confronted with an increasingly complex society, the demand for teachers is a professional update to a Lifelong Learning approach. Reflection on training as a place and time of negotiation and co-building of shared professional meanings called for a questioning of one's own teaching being and consolidated practices. The ability to listen, interpret, systematization skills and professional knowledge, sometimes implied, has helped teachers recognize experts in their profession by placing them in the condition of acquiring new professional models.
The research presents an one-year experimental training with 30 children's Preschool teachers on Competences Didactics. The aim is to experiment a new way of professional training with the theoretical learning of new pedagogical approaches, through projects developed and shared with colleagues and an expert tutor for the theoretical part and following the whole experimentation process. The tutor, as a reference figure, helps teachers to reflect on the design methodologies and how they interweave with the reference theory. The contribution will critically analyze the various phases of experimentation by proposing a model of training that add value and implement the professional profile in service of the teachers.
Through participant observation and privileged interviews with teachers, it was possible to follow the various phases of experimentation: 1) the first phase consisted in following the teachers and the expert tutor in the knowledge of the reference theory that would then be tested; 2) in the second phase, they began to hypothesize the experiments; 3) in the third phase, teachers and tutor discussed together the experiments proposed by the teachers, highlighting possible for and against points; 4) in the fourth phase, the teachers started the experimentations in the respective classes with the observation and the comparison with the tutor; in this phase, changes were made to the designs and we were confronted with the colleagues of the other schools through a chat created by the tutor, to understand what were the greatest difficulties encountered in the experiments; 5) after two or three months, the teachers re-proposed the experimentation within the classes with the changes made; 6) final restitution with the tutor and all the teachers participating in the course where the various projects of the difficulties encountered, for and against aspects were discussed to continue the work in the classes.
The continuous reflection and sharing of projects, accompanied by the constant presence of the tutor as an expert figure, have supported the experiments proposed by the teachers who have given theyself a challenge the new knowledge acquired by transforming them into skills in the field. Not only that: being in a work team with the constant presence of an expert figure of reference, has given new impetus to daily didactic. The experimentation also highlighted how working in a team improves the quality of teaching and the perception of well-being at teachers' work.