Renewing school: theories and methodologies for a project of engaged research for scholastic innovation

Italian schools are going through a very lively moment, as they are requested to renew the educational proposals and the teaching structure, on the one hand by the need to take on the European indications which outline a curriculum oriented towards reaching key skills to meet political, cultural, economic and social needs; on the other by the demands of renewal made by the players directly involved (teachers, children families). The project of scholastic innovation. A school, which has its roots in the Manifesto of the same name, is placed in this dynamic context offering itself as an experimentation of educational and didactic methods rooted in the long and articulated history of Italian pedagogical and didactic thought, but at the same time oriented by the most recent theoretical and practical suggestions that come from this country and elsewhere. The paper intends to present the start of the project of engaged research which directly involves head teachers, teachers, families and the local area in the definition of the main structures forming the basis of the proposal of scholastic experimentation, highlighting theoretical and methodological, pedagogical and didactical core, which support the transformative possibilities of a school. The innovation concerns in particular the organization of the context in terms of space, time, groups, materials and curricula. The formative offer is based on the experiential and explorative methods and implemented by the educating community in terms of shared pedagogical and didactic strategies. The research includes in its instruments video and audio recording of the decision-making and project development moments, but also the diary documentation by the different subjects involved of the passages deemed crucial to support the transformative processes, of themselves and of the school.