The PERMIT Teachers’ training approach: Learning from experience, experiencing to learn

Abstract

This article aims to introduce the envisioned strategy in the teachers’ training programme implemented within PERMIT project. Since the beginning, the project considered teachers’ education as the crucial component of an educational dispositive (as understood by U. Margiotta in the sense of a social mechanism allowing a group of people to do, think and implement something according to a precise strategy) able to bring about innovations on the project topic (intercultural education for dialogue in the civil society). A concrete goal of such training was to develop intercultural competences to manage complex learning processes in the scenario of three different realities interacting within the PERMIT project (Italy, Slovenia, Turkey). At the same time, such a teacher training dispositive wasa hypothesized to enhance a reflection that takes to develop teachers’ professional identity for the new hybrid and fluid learning space. In fact, in the authors vision, formal training has too structured activities, which need to be revisited in the light of a new strategy for teachers’ professional development in intercultural learning environments. In fact, the strategy focused on: supporting contact with peers in the locally and across
frontiers; the use of online learning tools; coaching to further experimentation in class; and the creative process of learning activities design undertaken by teachers in sistematizing
the many resources and ideas coming out from their work in class (“Pedagogy of learning unit”). In the end, the recognition of non-formal and informal learning would lead to the accreditation of learning by the University Ca’ Foscari of Venice