Abstract:

At the beginning of the 2020, Italy was shocked by the spread of the COVID-19 Pandemic. The Country was the first nation in Europe to face this challenge.To contain the worst outbreak Italy has ever experienced, the Government ordered the closure of all schools from 5 March 2020 to a time to be defined. Few days later the whole Country has been locked down.

During the lockdown, teachers continued to supply lessons remotely to all students, although the social and digital divide in the Country impacted students’ involvement somewhat. This way of teaching and learning has confronted teachers, students and families with new challenges. First of all the technology: the availability for schools and families of appropriate connection and devices. But also the familiarity with distance learning approaches was a important focus. Teachers found new way to keep students engaged and to balance between live lessons and self-study; families have heavily supported teachers acting as tutors at home; students have been asked to cope with totally different ways of relating with teachers and class mates.

To help teachers and families to cope with the emergency, the Avanguardie Educative Movement (AE) provided all italian schools more than 200 open webinars on distance learning. AE is a cultural movement founded in 2014 by Indire (National Institute for Documentation, Innovation and Educational Research) and 22 italian schools to encourage the transition from a lecture-based school model to more active and student-centered approaches. The Movement currently includes more than 1000 schools which are experimenting 14 “Ideas for Innovation”.

The Idea “Dentro Fuori la scuola-Service Learning” (“Inside/Outside the School-Service Learning) is focused on schools that are experimenting teaching and learning practices to connect the school with the community around. During the COVID-19 Pandemic we have observed the actions they carried out to manage Service Learning (SL) projects even remotely.

How these experiences have been re-designed or re-oriented by the schools in a virtual way? To understand if 'standard SL' 'holds up' in the virtual version (Waldner, McGorry, Murray, Widener, 2012; Strait, Nordyke, 2015) we implemented a grounded theory (Mortari, 2010) research design.
An exploratory form was sent to all 100 schools part of the Idea. The form will return the number of schools that have implemented virtual SL and how they are carrying it out.

The most interesting experiences in terms of achievements of service and learning goals (Furco, 1996) and quality of education (Tapia, 2006) will be analyzed in depth on the basis of a research protocol which includes a remote interview with the project contact person, the collection of the lesson plans and of the video and photo documentation of the experience.

A detailed description of two exemplary cases (one for the primary and lower secondary schools and one for upper secondary) will be provided. The research results will be useful to face the new schoolyear. On the basis of the guidelines developed by a Commission of experts from the Ministry of Education, distance learning approaches won’t be abandoned.

Moreover from September 2020 the Law 92/2019 will come into force; it requests the compulsory introduction of civic education in all schools levels. Virtual SL could also be of help to cope with the indications of the Law.

Keywords:

Service learning, virtual service learning, distance learning, grounded theory.