Abstract:

We describe and analyze a project of Education to Legality (“Education to legality between schools and the services of criminal and precautionary enforcement limiting of freedom”, 2022-2023) carried on in Lombardy, an Italian Region, as an institutional agreement including the Regional School Office, penitentiary institutions, universities, to outline guidelines and innovative training models of education to legality between school and prison that can be implemented in schools in the same region.

The project included a training course, with co-design workshop activities with/for school managers, teachers, operators in the world of justice, and involved the training and implementation of Action Research groups composed of schoolteachers (who work outside and inside the prison), justice professionals, and university professors/researchers, building a co-designed path of education to legality. This was aimed at both external students and students subjected to measures restricting personal freedom - in prison or under house arrest.

We will report in detail the activity carried out by an Action Research group established and coordinated by the University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Human Science for Education. This group also included: two teachers of the high school IIS “Paolo Frisi” (prison section) in the Bollate Prison, Milan; two teachers of the IIS “Paolo Frisi” (adult education department), Milan; two legal-pedagogical penitentiary officials; a manager and responsible for the observation and treatment of the Lombardy PRAP (the regional superintendency of the penitentiary administration); two classes of adults of the IIS “Paolo Frisi” (a first-year class of the Bollate Prison, 6 students, and a third-year class of the adult education department,14 students).

We will explore the strengths and weaknesses that emerged from the educational-didactic research projects, starting from the collaborative methodology of Action Research, closely connected to the transformative elements emerged from the encounter outside/inside the prison through the school (Mortari, 2016). This contribution presents the initial reflections that emerged from the research, and focuses on the education & training approaches: times, spaces, methodologies.

This study particularly highlights:
1) the values and difficulties of the collaborative research planned and carried on by several different institutions;
2) the essential presence of universities with the role of the pedagogue and researcher, as a fundamental element that makes possible collaborative actions and reflections on the meaning of the proposed practices (Mortari, 2003);
3) the need for medium/long time frames to give breath to the transformative power of learning, a need expressed by all students involved;
4) the broadening of the theme of legality to reach active citizenship (the theme of legality was not treated as an observation of rules and norms but declined as a different paradigm, based on common objects - identity, the “us”-“world” relationship - that could bring out autobiographies, life stories (Dalla Chiesa, 2023));
5) the urgency of specific training of teachers that clearly emerged (the expertise of those who led the experience in the two class groups were very significant variables), particularly on the possible active methodologies to involve students.

Keywords:

Adult Education, Prison, Action Research, Education to Legality.