The work experience of young teachers in Italian holiday colonies in the second half of the 20th century: an example of practical training

This historical-pedagogical contribution presents the first results of an ongoing research project which aims to reconstruct - through the archives, the iconographic sources and, in particular, the interviews - the experience of young teachers who worked as educators in Italian holiday colonies in the second half of the twentieth century. In the framework of the pedagogical orientation that considered outdoors as privileged space of apprenticeship to life, summer colonies since their origin often engaged newly qualified teachers who, in exchange for a modest remuneration, during the holidays accompanied groups of children to places considered congenial to physical and moral regeneration. If, on the one hand, the teacher's diploma was in many cases a necessary requirement to be hired as educators, on the other hand, the colonies were in fact a place of field training for teachers, who had the opportunity to approach the child in its entirety, in an important experience that taught the basics of educational practice. After the Second World War, the Italian summer colonies changed in a democratic direction and - in the context of the debate that re-evaluated extra-school education - they became in some cases significant places for the experimentation of Progressive education, still little practiced in the Italian schools of that time. As it emerged from the first interviews, the experience in the colonies proved to be an important professional background for the teachers, which revolutionized their traditional conception of teaching and sometimes transformed the way they worked in school.