The research project came from the meeting, which took place a few years ago, between INDIRE and the Tuscan network of Scientific Knowledge Workshops (Laboratori del Sapere Scientifico – LSS), a multi-year experience on laboratory teaching in the STEM area. The methodological approach proposed by the network aims to overcome the transmissive and book-like model of teaching STEM subjects, to the advantage of a meaningful idea of learning, promoted through programmes in which the student is actively involved in observation-problematisation-formulation of hypotheses-verification-generalisation processes.

This 2021-2022 research is the continuation of a programme initiated last year, which involved analysis, study, implementation in the classroom and documentation of educational programmes in which the LSS method was applied in addition to the Sciences, including Italian, across the two school cycles (from nursery school to the first two years of the second cycle).

Objectives

OB1: To support and promote didactic-disciplinary innovation processes in didactic practices in the various school levels and grades.

OB2: To support teaching professionalism with research and reflection practices.

OB3: To analyse the connections between disciplinary didactics and transdisciplinary elements of the curriculum.

Research questions

Q1: Is it possible to transfer the Scientific Knowledge Workshop approach to other disciplinary areas (in particular Italian) other than the scientific ones?

Q2: What are the common and specific aspects of the disciplines involved? And which of them can be attributed to the category of “disciplinary transversality”?

The purpose of the research

The research investigates the ways in which teachers at various levels and grades of schools design disciplinary programmes (Science and Italian) and then implement them in the classroom by identifying the transversal elements of the disciplines themselves, and by applying an approach based on common parameters and work phases, precisely Observation, Verbalisation, Discussion and Conceptualisation, Representation of knowledge.