Mentor or Magister. Teaching in the Age of Counter-reformation

Abstract

Moving between the frameworks of empowerment and problematicism, the paper analyzes the internal coherence and prospects of the recent Italian National Guidelines for the School. The idea of mentoring and narrative guidance, widely funded and promoted by PNRR funds, seemed to open up to a non-dogmatic idea of teaching, focused on empathy, non-judgement and personalization. Given the emphasis in the latest Guidelines on the magister as a role model to be revered, the article attempts to understand whether this model is consistent with the idea of mentor and tutor or whether it actually pushes towards a discontinuity (or a counter-reform) that rejects the epistemology of complexity and constructivism. The contribution attempts to demonstrate why it would be more correct to define them as National (Counter)Reformation.