• it
  • en
Ricerca per l'innovazione della scuola italiana
Innovazione metodologica e organizzativa nelle scuole piccole

The Professionalism Repertoire for innovation in schools

Tipo di ricerca: Valutativa
Ambito: Ricerca endogena

The Repertoire was created as an objective of the NOP Small Schools project in response to an assignment by the Ministry of Education to intervene in the trend of teachers leaving small schools, to initiate retainment processes and to promote the work of teachers and head teachers experienced in areas undergoing difficulties, besides encouraging improvement and innovation processes.

The Repertoire is an online environment, which allows experienced teachers and head teachers to create a profile of themselves, to develop a balance of skills integrated with facts concerning the educational experience acquired in the field and validated by a dedicated committee of researchers and experts in order to appear in a list of recognised professionals who can be contacted by the communities. The first experiment in the repertoire environment, open to both INDIRE and the Ministry of Education, will be carried out in small schools, and is conceived to explore the research questions.

Objectives

With regard to the generic structural objectives of promoting proximity school models, supporting the quality of the educational experience in mixed-age classes, and identifying models and practices characterised by the use of technologies, the research project pursues the following specific objectives:

OB1: To validate the skills profiles envisaged in the professionalism repertoire for innovation;

OB2: To map the change management models implemented by schools that can trigger improvement processes.

Research questions

Q1: Does the description of the skills profiles of professional roles defined in the Repertoire identify the effective professional skills needed to improve schools?

Q2: Does the way in which change is managed (e.g., top-down vs bottom-up, levels of internal commitment and the teaching staff’s engagement, choice of the “place” for centralised vs decentralised intervention, etc.) have an impact on the results achieved (in terms of the school’s improvement)?

The research questions will have an impact on the quality of the educational experience offered in schools and small schools. Indeed, the questions will give rise to a project aimed at understanding how the skills profiles identified (such as, for example, the Tutor of Small Schools) can affect the improvement of organisational and educational processes in small schools, and whether these improvements are linked to particular change management models.

Recipients

  • Target teachers and head teachers experienced in small schools;
  • Target beneficiaries of the interventions: small and isolated schools.