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Ricerca per l'innovazione della scuola italiana

Making Learning and Thinking Visible in Italian Secondary Schools (MLTV)

Harvard Project Zero and INDIRE experiment in Italy a new way of schooling

The school of today must face up to a great challenge: provide students with the necessary skills and knowledge to deal with the complexity and fast speed of our times.

Globalisation and the economy of the 21st century demand the ability to learn and function as part of increasingly diverse groups in which our knowledge of ourselves as individual and group learners is crucial. Yet, in many schools, the acquisition of knowledge is still primarily viewed as an individual act, rather than a social and communicative one. How can teaching and learning extend beyond the passive transmission of knowledge from teachers to students, to engage and inform learners in and outside the classroom? How can we shift the balance in classrooms to include a focus on creating as well as conveying knowledge, culture, and values?

Project Zero and INDIRE are collaborating on the experimentation of an innovative educational model able to valorise and capitalise on disciplinary knowledge and skills, to develop a variety of ways of thinking: critical, creative, logical-mathematical, reflexive, decisional, and systemic.

The project Making Learning and Thinking Visible in Italian Secondary Schools (MLTV) will investigate how two key Project Zero conceptual frameworks — Making Learning Visible and Visible Thinking — can be adapted with integrity in Italian public secondary schools.

In particular, the two frameworks promote:

  • A different learning approach
  • More motivation for learning
  • Abilities and attitudes for critical and creative thinking
  • Creation and transmission of knowledge, culture and values
  • Thinking patterns applicable outside and inside the classroom

The key aspect of this approach is documentation, intended as observation, registration, interpretation and sharing the learning process and its outcomes in order to delve into the learning process.  The main objective is to support and promote the creation of a culture of schooling based on thinking patterns and deep understanding, considered as prerequisites for effective learning.