indireinforma
How to establish synergies between schools and the third sector to combat “educational poverty”?
There are increasingly more Italian schools which, in order to curb “educational poverty”, form partnerships and co-plan educational courses with Third Sector institutions present in the area.
But how can we create a stimulating and engaging educational path that is able to combine “the inside of the school” with “the outside of the school”? This and other questions are answered in the Toolkit for collaboration between schools and the educational Third Sector, a freely downloadable tool which explains how to carry out joint initiatives to improve the educational offer and deal with serious phenomena such as early school leaving and early school abandonment.
The toolkit is aimed at teachers, educators and more generally at all members of the educational community who wish to start specific Service Learning courses to be understood as the result of a set of synergistic processes between school and the Third Sector undertaken with the aim of expanding and qualify the training offer, enhancing its characteristics of equity, quality and inclusiveness.
The toolkit, a support that can be used, among other things, to implement the Idea «Inside/outside school – Service Learning» in the curricula of schools of all levels, is a valuable tool-guide because it is conceived in such a way as to accompany those who intended to create “alliances” inspired by the principle of collaboration between the school and other local realities. The toolkit is useful for designing in partnership; to facilitate, analyse, reflect and review the process implemented between two or more actors interested in the implementation of specific service or intervention projects aimed at satisfying defined needs. IT is a vademecum containing practical advice and detailed descriptions of organisational, management and teaching processes in relation to the different phases which mark the co-planning of training courses which go in the direction of a school which changes according to the skills of the knowledge society and the methods used today to teach and learn them.
The toolkit was born from the collaboration between the research group that in the “Educational Avant-garde” movement deals with the idea “Inside/outside the school – Service Learning” and the educators of the COeSO Empoli Consortium – ERGO Network. It is a tool curated by Chiara Giunti, Patrizia Lotti, Massimiliano Naldini and Lorenza Orlandini (INDIRE), Fabrizio Fioretti and Sara Spini (COeSO Empoli Consortium – ERGO Network). It was developed as part of the INDIRE action-research project «Service Learning for collaboration between schools and the Third Sector» (Three-year Activity Plan 2021-2024) launched in 2020 which saw the Third Sector become the promoter of a new alliance between territory and educational institutions able to develop co-planning and educational “hybridization”.
The toolkit also makes use of the experiences of teachers and head teachers of four Tuscan schools (Empolese Valdelsa area and lower Valdarno): IC «Franco Sacchetti» of San Miniato (Pisa); the CI «Baccio da Montelupo» of Montelupo Fiorentino (Florence); the CI «Capraia e Limite» of Capraia e Limite (Florence); the ISIS «Federig Enriques» of Castelfiorentino (Florence).