Ask me what I think - Service Learning and the development of civic skills in pre-service teachers' training

Service Learning (SL) is an approach particularly effective for the in-service teacher training because it allows future teachers. Firstly because it meets the European Commission recommendations about pre-service teachers\u2019 training according to which the dialogue and collaboration between schools and universities are essential to promote effective pre-service teachers\u2019 training (European Commission, 2014). Moreover, SL, promotes in future teachers a reflective attitude, making them discover that facing the real problems that characterise real educational contexts means being able to analyse their practical experience to evaluate theories of education rooted in experience, which are meaningful frameworks for practice (Mortari, 2017). And finally, SL helps pre-service teachers to understand what it means to act in a service-oriented manner, because service the \u201caction\u201d in SL is not simply the result if a \u201cdeal\u201d between two parties (the pre-service teacher and the in-service teacher) but is the flourishing of a relationship that involves the whole community in which this experience is set, and this makes the SL a transformative moment not only for the teachers who are directly involved in it but also for the whole environment in which this experience. is set (Boyle\u2010Baise, 1998, European Commission, 2014). In conclusion SL is an experiential learning that helps to develop the profile of a teacher in which the professional skills are strictly connected to civic skills: for these reasons, University of Verona organizes for students of the Master\u2019s Degree in Primary School Education a Service Learning program, aimed to enrich future teachers profile developing not only their professional skills bit also their civic skills, reading it in the light of the ethics of care. This program, which is currently at its second edition, involves senior students, in-service teachers in different schools and an academic team that assumes the role of supervisor. Future students define: (i) in cooperation with in-service teachers the needs of the contexts, (ii) in cooperation with the academic team the educative goals that they must reach and (iii) in cooperation with in-service teachers and the academic team the project aimed to suit the context\u2019s needs and reach the student\u2019s educative goals. At the end, every student realises a detailed record of every phase of the CSL and a dissertation that critically analyses service actions. This paper presents the first results of a research conducted on forty students involved in the SL program during the academic year 2017/2018. This study starts from a consideration: we have designed this program because we are convinced that a SL experience helps future teachers to develop skills essential for their professional profile (reflective skills, civic skills, teaching skills, etc.) but, starting from their experience, what the subjects involved in the SL experience think to have gained through this experience? To find an answer to this question we developed a study that follows an ecological paradigm, according to the idea that in order to throw light on something that happens in a real context you must ask to those who are involved in that real context (Merriam, 2002; Mortari, 2007). According to its aim, the study is set in a phenomenological framework because it is particularly suitable to explore the meanings that someone gives to his or her experience (Lincoln and Guba 1985; Mortari, 2007). The data are embodied by reflective texts written by the students about their SL experiences. The analysis, which is still ongoing, is conducted through the tool of content analysis because it allows to define and organize the meaning of a text to discover the core elements without losings its undertones (Elo & Kyngas, 2008; Hsieh & Shannon, 2005

Children\u2019s ethical thinking: the \u201cMelArete\u201d project

\u201cMelArete\u201d is an educative and research project promoted by the Center of Educational and Didactic Research of the University of Verona in Italy. The word \u201cMelArete\u201d originates from the union of the Greek terms \u201cmel\ue9te\u201d (which means \u201ccare\u201d) and \u201caret\ue9\u201d (which means \u201cvirtue\u201d). The project is aimed at educating children to virtue ethics and exploring their ethical thinking (Mortari and Mazzoni, 2014). The theoretical background is grounded in the Aristotelian and Socratic ethical visions. Important references are also found in the philosophy of care (Held, 2006; Mortari, 2015; Noddings, 1984, 1992) and in the concept of Ricoeur (1990) about the distinction between ethics and morality. The epistemological background of the research refers to \u201cnaturalistic inquiry\u201d (Lincoln and Guba, 1985), according to which the phenomenon under study should be investigated in the context where it appears. The project involves children attending kindergarten (5-6 y.o.) and primary school (9-10 y.o.). The experience is aimed at encouraging children to reflect about the concepts of \u201cgood\u201d and \u201ccare\u201d, about the general idea of \u201cvirtue\u201d and about some specific virtues, such as courage, generosity, respect and justice. The activities designed to reach these educative aims and collect data for the research are the following: class conversations, narratives, vignettes, games. Another important activity is the \u201cdiary of virtue\u201d, a journal where children reflect on their everyday ethical experience. The qualitative data analysis, that follows an inductive and phenomenological approach (Mortari, 2007), is still in progress. However, we can already present some specific examples that show the richness of children\u2019s ethical thinking

A case of Service Learning and Research Engagement in pre-service teachers\u2019 education

Service Learning (SL) represents one experiential methodology largely adopted in Higher Education because it is able to develop both academic and soft skills, in particular civic and reflective ones. SL has gained the attention of teacher educators in the U.S. since the 1990s.. Many scholars have underlined how SL is useful to enhance elements essential for future teachers as (a) the development of teaching skills, (b) reflective skills; (c) a more complex vision of teaching and learning practices; (d) an attention to special need children and children coming from different social and ethnical backgrounds; (e) a human service-oriented vision of teaching; and in building a community of practice. Moreover, SL is particularly suitable in Teacher Education because it connects pre-service with in-service teachers, as requested by the European Commission (2014); from this relationship, it involves the whole community in a process of transformation

Educare all’amicizia per costruire il bene comune. Una ricerca educativa alla scuola primaria

L’articolo presenta l’impianto teoretico, educativo ed empirico del progetto Educare all’amicizia per costruire il bene comune, soffermandosi in particolare sul percorso elaborato per le scuole primarie in risposta al diffuso senso di civic disengagement. L’elaborazione teoretica, fondata nella visione aristotelica, propone un modello di educazione alla cittadinanza intesa come educazione all’amicizia, virtù politica per eccellenza e forma di cura. Sulla base di tale teoria è stato elaborato un progetto di ricerca educativa, nel quale le attività hanno sia valenza educativa che valenza euristica, volto a stimolare e comprendere la riflessione di bambini e bambine sui temi dell’etica per il bene comune. Gli esiti della ricerca mostrano la ricchezza del pensiero di bambini/e, i/le quali attestano che l’amicizia è una virtù politica, cioè una virtù capace di dare forma a una visione ‘engaged’ della cittadinanza. Si può così affermare che adottare la via della riflessione sulla virtù dell’amicizia rappresenta un valido approccio per l’educazione alla cittadinanza

Diventare insegnanti, tra ricerca e servizio. La pedagogia del Service Learning nella formazione dei futuri docenti

Il presente articolo intende introdurre e analizzare il Service Learning quale metodo per la formazione dei futuri insegnanti alla ricerca. L\u201fimportanza di acquisire competenze di ricerca da parte dei docenti \ue8 ormai riconosciuta sia nella letteratura scientifica internazionale e nazionale, sia in alcuni recenti documenti europei sulla formazione iniziale degli insegnanti. Il Service Learning viene quindi presentato come metodo in grado di sviluppare le competenze di ricerca nei futuri docenti, secondo un modello capace di promuovere contestualmente altri importanti elementi connessi alla prospettiva etica del servizio: ascolto dei problemi reali del mondo della scuola, promozione del senso di comunit\ue0, valorizzazione della relazione scuola-universit\ue0

Service Learning: A Philosophy and Practice to Reframe Higher Education.

In order to answer the call of Agenda 2030 (UN, 2015), higher education must assist in giving form to a new society in which democracy is cultivated in both the minds and practices of our society. A democratic education is the answer to the challenges of contemporary society, which is characterized by indifference and an unwillingness to engage for the common good. Educational practices are often aligned to this trend so that they are planned with the aim of developing competences useful for individual success and the economic improvement of society. It is necessary to envision a new design for higher education that promotes in people the disposition to engage in the construction of a society where everyone has an equal opportunity to live a good and fulfilling life. Useful for this purpose can be a rediscovery of the classical position of Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle that present virtue and ethics as a theoretical framework for education. This framework can be used as a foundation upon which to renew academic practices by planning and designing experiences able to translate theory into actions. Service learning is an interesting model that would allow for this and would guide practices that support a democratic education informed by virtue and ethics. If useful for redirecting higher education, service learning is particularly suitable for educating teachers, the practitioners who have a great responsibility for transforming society through education. In this paper, after developing the appropriate theoretical framework, we present, as an example of service learning, the Community Research Service Learning experience carried out at the University of Verona in the Primary Teacher Education master's degree program

Diventare insegnanti, tra ricerca e servizio. La pedagogia del Service Learning nella formazione dei futuri docenti

Il presente articolo intende introdurre e analizzare il Service Learning quale metodo per la formazione dei futuri insegnanti alla ricerca. L’importanza di acquisire competenze di ricerca da parte dei docenti è ormai riconosciuta sia nella letteratura scientifica internazionale e nazionale, sia in alcuni recenti documenti europei sulla formazione iniziale degli insegnanti. Il Service Learning viene quindi presentato come metodo in grado di sviluppare le competenze di ricerca nei futuri docenti, secondo un modello capace di promuovere contestualmente altri importanti elementi connessi alla prospettiva etica del servizio: ascolto dei problemi reali del mondo della scuola, promozione del senso di comunità, valorizzazione della relazione scuola-università

Service learning e civic engagement. Una nuova politica per l\u2019educazione

Oggetto del volume \ue8 il Service Learning inteso come un cambio di paradigma, in grado di sostituire la predominante cultura mercantilista dell\u2019apprendimento e della qualit\ue0, con quella umanistica. Dal volume emerge una visione di Service Learning che tiene insieme prospettiva e azione e che nel contempo pu\uf2 aiutare a fronteggiare la pressione a conformarsi alle richieste di una societ\ue0 nella quale \ue8 prevalente la logica di un profitto privo di regole, che alimenta una pedagogia dell\u2019individualismo, della competizione esasperata, attraverso una pedagogia del servizio, dell\u2019incontro, del dialogo, della solidariet\ue0, della cooperazione, dell\u2019inclusione. I saggi raccolti in questo volume sono suddivisi in tre parti: la prima affronta il rapporto tra service learning e nuove politiche educative; la seconda raccoglie contributi che tracciano esperienze attivate in diversi contesti; la terza descrive un\u2019esperienza vissuta di service learning condotta per la prima volta in Italia da un\u2019Accademia di Belle Arti e la prima esperienza di Olimpiadi del Service Learning del Salent

Non-intrusive reduced order modeling of nonlinear problems using neural networks

We develop a non-intrusive reduced basis (RB) method for parametrized steady-state partial differential equations (PDEs). The method extracts a reduced basis from a collection of high-fidelity solutions via a proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) and employs artificial neural networks (ANNs), particularly multi-layer perceptrons (MLPs), to accurately approxi- mate the coefficients of the reduced model. The search for the optimal number of neurons and the minimum amount of training samples to avoid overfitting is carried out in the offline phase through an automatic routine, relying upon a joint use of the latin hypercube sampling (LHS) and the Levenberg-Marquardt training algorithm. This guarantees a complete offline-online decoupling, leading to an efficient RB method - referred to as POD-NN - suitable also for general nonlinear problems with a non-affine parametric dependence. Numerical studies are presented for the nonlinear Poisson equation and for driven cavity viscous flows, modeled through the steady incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. Both physical and geometrical parametrizations are considered. Several results confirm the accuracy of the POD-NN method and show the substantial speed-up enabled at the online stage as compared to a traditional RB strategy

Discorsi di cura. Diari riflessivi per un vocabolario etico

In una società caratterizzata dalla violenza, che passa attraverso gesti e parole, la sfida educativa è quella di dare forma alla socratica epimeleia, un’educazione spirituale per la quale è necessario progettare strumenti in grado di far fiorire l’anima di ciascuno. Tra questi il più potente è quello della parola, «la più immediata “incarnazione” dello spirito» (Stein, 2010, p. 263). Il progetto di ricerca educativa MelArete propone ai bambini esperienze e parole inusuali che sono al fondamento dell’etica occidentale (Socrate-Platone e Aristotele): quelle che parlano di virtù come espressione di cura. Nel paper viene presentata l’analisi longitudinale, svolta con metodo meticciato (Mortari, 2007), dei “diari delle virtù” dei bambini di cinque anni: strumenti riflessivi nei quali riflettono sull’etica quotidiana, narrandola e dando a essa un nome, elaborando “discorsi di cura”