Abstract:

The proposed experience, inspired by the laboratories of 'operative epistemology' of Fabbri and Munari, aims at a critical 'appropriation' and a 'clinical' knowledge approach to the educational phenomenon. In particular, the meeting described - which is part of a laboratory course of five meetings of three hours each - focused on a critical reflection, through an active experimentation methodology, on the processes of elaboration of knowledge and the relationship that is established with these processes, namely the implicit that each of us possesses in relation to the way in which it is possible to organize knowledge and learning. Specifically, it was proposed to students who attended the Methodology laboratory of clinical pedagogical intervention (chair 2) conducted by Dr. Mariarosaria De Simone in the a.y 2020/2021 and 2021/2022 within the Bachelor Degree Course in Science and Psychological Techniques of the Federico II University of Naples, to work with the "Metaphors of knowledge", illustrated cards created by Fabbri, Munari and Strada, in order to be able to reflect on the way in which each one, implicitly, metaphorically organizes what he knows, learns and studies. The 100 participating male and female students were asked, as an integral part of the laboratory reflective process, to fill in a metacognitive questionnaire with open questions. The narrative material produced was subjected to a qualitative analysis structured in two phases; the first conducted according to the phenomenological method, with a panel of two independent judges who viewed and analyzed all the material collected and the second phase of analysis of the collected textual content supported by the use of the T-Lab software.

From the critical analysis of the preferred metaphors chosen (and also not chosen) by the students emerges not only a 'photograph' of what their educational 'imaginary' is, and in particular of learning, but also, and above all, a reflection about the importance of training, for future professionals who will work in educational and care contexts, capable of promoting metacognitive and metaemotional skills such as to guide, in daily working practice, a reflective action rather than guided by 'naive theories'.

Keywords:

Operational epistemology, metaphorical narration, implicit education, critical-clinical approach, meta-cognitive skills.