The training internship for the socio-pedagogical educator: a tool for professional development

Abstract

The recent evolution of the Italian regulatory framework of the last two years has particularly concerned
the profiles of the socio-pedagogical professional educator and the pedagogue.
The measures introduced between 2017 and 2018 indeed fulfilled the need, claimed by the academic
and professional world, to reach a greater definition of curricular requirements, functions
and areas of intervention for both professions.
The new configuration of the educational professions represents a challenge and requires processes
of adaptation of training devices for internships in degree course in Educational Sciences. With
this aim, a project research was undertaken on reorganization of the curricular internship for the
degree course in Educational Sciences, in the academic years 2016/2017 and 2017/2018, in order
to further enhance the theoretical-practical component of learning through a professionalizing intervention.
The present contribution gives a general overview on the regulation of the internship in Italy and
secondly analyses the composite framework of preparatory training for field work of the sociopedagogical
professional educator. The second part of this article illustrates the experience gained
at the degree course in Educational Sciences of the University of Roma Tre and the operational
proposal experimented in the project, proposal hopefully useful to implement a concrete synergy
between university, professionals and the non-profit sector.