Abstract:

Pre-service teacher training should support future teacher in the development of the skills needed to deal with the complexity of the contemporary education landscape, In order to achieve this goal it is essential to promote a professional growth that establishes meaningful relationships between the academic research and the needs emerging by the real contexts (in-service teachers, school communities, etc.) in order to support the practitioners in their work (Lagemann, 1999, Pring, 2000; Levine, 2006; Epstein, 2013).

The aim of the empirical inquiry here presented is to understand the real needs of schools, in order to calibrate the pre-service teacher training in the light of the issues and challenges the world of education is facing today. This research follows a ecological framework according to the idea that it is important to study the world of meanings in which a person moves (Merriam, 2002; Mortari, 2007) and it adheres to a phenomenological method, because it is particularly suitable to explore people’s lived experience (Lincoln & Guba 1985). The tool of collecting data is a semi-structured interview, aimed to investigate what are the most important problems emerging from schools and also the way the university can support them in these challenges. The analysis is conducted using content analysis method, because it allows to define and organize the meaning of a text to discover the core elements without losings its undertones (Elo & Kyngas, 2008; Hsieh & Shannon, 2005).

Our analysis allows us to define macro categories in which the teacher’s problems and needs are organized: characteristics of the context, teaching aspects, relationship with the children and transversal elements, relationship between school and parents, relationship within the teachers and between teachers and other professional roles, teachers’ learning needs. The paper will present the results of a study that involves 813 in-service teachers working in school connected to the University of Verona, during the academic year 2018/2019.

Keywords:

Educational needs, future teachers, civic engagement.