Chapter Supporting Informal Learning in Higher Education Internships

This paper addresses several critical issues relating to the organization of internships at universities, dealing above all with ‘curricular’ internships, i.e., those apprenticeship experiences included as mandatory in university courses. Starting from the idea of ‘informal learning’, the paper shows the strong connection between new workplace needs and the potentiality of pedagogical and reflective approaches in designing internship experience

Transforming the University through the Students’ Voice

It can be said that higher education systems have undergone a momentous change that has irreversibly transformed the nature, the goals, and the scientific, educational and organisational practices. In Europe, and in particular in Italy, new working scenarios and new knowledge needs have emphasised the critical factors and contradictions of curricula and strategies of university governance that are all too often fixed on theoretical-disciplinary logic. There is often no parallel attention to the pertinence with outgoing professionals, when there is a need to give the right space to all the disciplinary areas in the courses. It is not difficult to trace experiences planned more on self-referential than workplace oriented criteria. Thus, the challenge of producing important, relevant knowledge for social, organisational and working contexts becomes increasingly vital for universities, as well as spreading investigation devices that can produce located knowledge

Developing instrumental, transversal and vertical skills through transformative methodologies

The article deals with the concept of capability and soft skills and how these competencies are becoming central for instructors and educators in formal and informal adult education settings. The article starts questioning how higher education classrooms can become a space to promote employability using collaborative development and action inquiry

Developing instrumental, transversal and vertical skills through transformative methodologies

The article deals with the concept of capability and soft skills and how these competencies are becoming central for instructors and educators in formal and informal adult education settings. The article starts questioning how higher education classrooms can become a space to promote employability using collaborative development and action inquiry. Supportare l’apprendimento di competenze strumentali, trasversali e verticali tramite metodi trasformativiL’articolo parte descrivendo la differenza tra capacità e competenze trasversali e di come queste stanno diventando centrali nel dibattito sull’innovazione dei sistemi di higher education e del rapporto tra formazione, mondo del lavoro e competenze sociali. Il contributo descrive come i setting formativi possono diventare uno spazio per promuovere l’occupabilità usando metodologie trasformative

Freire e Fromm. Biografie e connessioni teoriche

The article presents a comparative analysis between Paulo Freire and Erich Fromm. The introduction is focused on the great importance of studying and interpreting Freire’s work nowadays and its contribution to Pedagogy and other fields. The article presents a synthesis of both Freire and Fromm’s biographies and some similar aspects that emerge, such as their experience with religion, the study of Marxism and their life in exile. Afterwards some key concepts used by the authors are analyzed. Their approaches to education, freedom, oppression, awareness and emancipation converge in many aspects and can be complementary and useful in several ways for contemporary studies

Dealing with polarization in schools: reflective and deliberative practices

Polarization and various extremist movements are on the rise and young people’s exposure to propaganda, disinformation, racism and hate speech has increased (Benjamin et al., 2021). Not only the society tends to be more polarized, but there is mounting concern that social media sites contribute to it by creating echo chambers that insulate people from opposing views about current events (Bail et al., 2018; Kubin and von Sikorski, 2021). Since teachers are at the forefront of these trends, they get to witness and address first-hand the effects and consequences that the various polarized ideologies may have on youth. Therefore, developing a global perspective that allows students to participate in an interconnected world, understand different viewpoints, learn to dialogue, value other cultures, and benefit from interculturality has become the objectives of world educational policy (Azqueta and Menino Arribas, 2020). The aim of this paper is to discuss the topic of polarization and then focus on two socio-pedagogical frameworks that are useful in this field: deliberative theory and reflexive practices