Giovanni Modugno’s teacher training proposal between the two World Wars: teachers’ internships as “schools of life and action”

Abstract

As he expressed as early as the 1910s in the debates on how to reform the education curriculum for prospective teachers, Giovanni Modugno showed an original predilection for internships as training methods for elementary school teachers. An analysis of some of his writings—published in the journals “La nostra scuola”, “La nuova scuola italiana”, “Levana”, and others—reveals that his appreciation for Lombardo Radice’s thought didn’t prevent him from exploring Friedrich Förster’s pedagogy. From Förster, Modugno derived the idea that internships can be “schools of life and action.” Because of the deep epistemological and pedagogical value of this concept, which innovates the relationship between experience and life sciences, Modugno defended this idea even after Gentile’s reform of teachers’ education and during the darkest times of Fascism. His conception of teachers’ internships promoted more synergy between pedagogy and other disciplines, as well as the practice of reflection as a professional habit.