Abstract:

The Italian national project "Oltre i Confini. Un modello di scuola aperta al territorio" (ID-ADN-00279 – 2018/2023), led by CIDI of Milan and funded through the Fund to Combat Educational Poverty in Minors - an agreement between banking foundations represented by Acri (Association of Foundations and Savings Banks), the National Third Sector Forum, and the Government, was specifically aimed at preventing and combating school dropout, focusing on students aged 11 to 16. The project planned the creation of 45 ALP (Multifunctional Lab Classrooms), one for each school involved, aimed at transforming traditional classrooms into an innovative and multifunctional learning environment. The experience of the "Oltre I Confini" project anticipated the strategic choices of the PNRR (National Recovery and Resilience Plan) with the construction of Next Generation Classrooms; schools already active in the project indeed found continuity in the actions foreseen by the PNRR, whose funds have allowed the replication of the learning environments experimented with during the years they participated in the project.

The University of Milan Bicocca was tasked with the qualitative impact evaluation of the project to examine the perceived effectiveness of the project, investigating various perspectives on the new teaching methodologies and learning environments, which allowed to explore how and at what level changes in teaching occurred and to identify the most significant changes, both expected and unexpected.

The methodology adopted for the evaluative research is based on the Fourth Generation Constructivist Paradigm, which has enabled the mobilization and enhancement of the experiential, professional, and organizational knowledge of students and teachers. This approach emphasizes the pluralism of values and the uniqueness of individual experiences, promoting negotiation as a tool to significantly contribute to community development, in this sense, in a dimension of prevention and combating school dropout.

For the participatory evaluative research, the following qualitative tools were used: semi-structured in-depth interviews, focus groups, and a case study. The research was conducted on a purposive sample following the selection criterion of schools that had continuity of principals for more than two years during the project (48.89% of the schools).

This contribution offers a bottom-up analysis from the teachers' perspective regarding the methodological changes in teaching resulting from the reorganization of the classroom setting. In particular, n.5 focus groups were analyzed, involving a total of n.19 teachers concerning the impact of the ALP on the learning process. The main results refer to the following dimensions: methodological innovation, collaborative and collective learning, adaptability of the physical space, response to personalized educational objectives, motivation and student engagement, and integration of technologies in teaching.

Keywords:

Next Generation Classroom, participatory evaluation, school dropout prevention, qualitative research.