The research comes from the need to investigate the impact of the Educational Avant-garde “model” on schools that are part of it, with the aim of describing the processes, improving the model and informing/guiding policies on education. To this end, the research project aims to design and develop self-assessment tools for schools that are part of the Educational Avant-garde Movement in order to encourage the ability to reflect on the “maturity” of innovation processes at the school level. Schools are called on to deal with multi-level innovation processes (Guida, Mosa, Panzavolta, 2019) that affect the size of the class (micro level), of the school (meso level) and of the extra school framework (macro level). Often, however, innovation processes remain confined to the first of these levels and find it hard to spread within the school. Similarly, individual institutions fail to transfer their innovative potential to other schools. It is, therefore, necessary, starting with the definitions of “innovation”, “rooting” and “systemisation”, to analyse these phenomena in Educational Avant-garde schools and to enable self-analysis and improvement processes [micro-meso-macro level].

Objectives

• OB1: To investigate the impact of the Educational Avant-garde “model” on the implementation and rooting of innovation in schools that are part of the Movement (OG1);
• OB2: To define self-assessment tools for schools that are able to encourage the ability to reflect on the level of “maturity” with respect to processes of putting in place and rooting educational innovation (OG1);
• OB3: To describe good practices in terms of supporting innovation processes with a view to scalability between micro, meso and macro levels (OG1, OG3);
• OB4: To provide data and evidence on innovation in schools to guide the strategic choices of policy makers (OG2, OG3).

Research questions

• Q1: What is the impact of the Educational Avant-garde “model” on the processes of putting in place and rooting innovation in schools?
• Q2: What dimensions/indicators/descriptors can operationalise the concepts of innovation/systemisation and rooting as defined within the scope of the Educational Avant-garde Movement?
• Q3: What are the best strategies and tools for supporting the scalability of innovation processes between the micro, meso and macro levels?

Recipients

Schools of all levels and grades, which have joined the Educational Avant-garde Movement and which intend to reinterpret their innovation processes to understand and support them between the micro-meso and macro levels.