Teaching or research? The training of secondary school teachers in Magisterium Schools (1875-1920)

Abstract

In 1875 the minister Bonghi instituted – at the Faculties of Letters and Philosophy and of Mathematical, Physical and Natural Sciences of some Italian Universities - the Magisterium Schools, aimed at obtaining the diploma for teaching in teacher training school and high schools. 

The experience proved inadequate due to a variety of factors: short training; recourse to University professors as educators; poor economic investments. The greatest limitation was the preference given to an approach that favored the theoretical dimension at the expense of the practical one in a difficult and, at times, ambiguous combination of research and teaching, that characterizes, still in the 2000s, the debate on the preparation of secondary teachers.

Emblematic is the case of the Magisterium School of the Letters Faculty of Turin that started a series of publications of students, considered valuable for scientific value and documentation of sources.