Il lavoro formativo dell’insegnante. Il caso delle Lingue e delle Civiltà Straniere

Abstract

The educational work of teachers. The case of Foreign Languages and Cultures. Nowadays, how is it possible to deal with the crucial issue of teacher training without giving in to the temptation of seeing them as technocrats of knowledge? On what conditions is it possible to return teachers their decisive educational role? How is it materially possible to anchor this role to the complexity of the specific socio-cultural situations in which teachers work and will work in the future? These are the three questions examined in this article, which, in part, makes use of the recent experience of the first series of Tirocinio Formativo Attivo (T.F.A.) for teacher training and in the light of the deep awareness that the work of teachers should be interpreted above all as cultural commitment “en situation”. Particularly the case of teachers of Foreign Languages and Cultures lends itself well to the identification of the need for a school rethought as a laboratory of life and culture. A laboratory placed in an open and well-structured horizon –regarding the main four European languages– where the humanistic knowledge of cultural processes can effectively rediscover a strong perspective of sense. This gives rise to the idea that the cultural instruments involved have an essential role, with regard to the educational relationship between teachers and students, or with respect to their mutual existential ability to plan, or concerning the fundamental role of the school – particularly secondary school, which is too often perceived as the least inclined to “educate” – in the education of a conscious and critical intelligence, of wide and complex visions of the world, of richer civil and cultural horizons.