Periodical n.3 May/June 2016

LEADING ARTICLE: Disregard,responsibly

Roberto Farnè

 

Focus

 

Piero Bertolini’s early childhood education, ten years on

By Roberto Farné

 

In the front line of phenomenology and intentionality

Andrea Canevaro

Body, relations, intentionality, responsibility, communication: these are just some of the words marking the boundaries of Piero Bertolini’s educational thoughts and research, where phenomenology is understood as the theoretical and practical orientation in educational action connoted by a forward-looking proactive approach.

 

Borderland pedagogy

Franco Frabboni

The idea of pedagogy as a science oriented on one hand to dialogue and interaction with other human and social sciences, and on the other the development of a strict, non-ideological critical horizon is one of the fundamental features of Piero Bertolini's work on education as a driving force for change.

 

Phenomenology and early childhood education

Milena Manini

With Piero Bertolini, the relevance of early childhood education is marked by scientific planning and political-social commitment, focusing not only on children and their right to education right from the very early years of life, but also the professionalism of teachers and the need to consider this as the result of post-graduate training.

 

Twoards the educational city

Vittorio Pranzini

Piero Bertolini’s educational direction in the experience of the municipality of Ravenna

In the Seventies and Eighties, the municipality of Ravenna was renowned as an authentic educational laboratory, focusing on early childhood services in the broader context of a project as an “educating city”. The interaction and synergy between the local policies, scientific skills and educational professionalism were the guiding features underlying the drive for change.

 

Being the world, today

Matilde Callari Galli

Seeking to identify the new “places” of learning through the ethnography of contemporaneity. Many of the stones laid by Piero Bertolini and his pedagogy pave new ways of organising a cultural transmission that subverts the - useless if not harmful - categories of the past. The full meaning of his research can be found in the relations built between stakeholders, in the connections between individual and community, between specificity and totality, and in their ultimate recomposition.

 

The child at the nursery

Piero Bertolini

The conference “Dove va l’asilo nido” (“Where the nursery is going”) was organised in Mantua on 18 and 19 April 1986, by the local municipality and our journal. Bertolini gave the opening speech, which was immediately published in issue 9-10 (May-June) 1986 of Infanzia. We would like to offer the text again, chosen because of its particular originality: Bertolini does not choose a conventional scientific language, but rather the introspective language of a child, Gianni, in his final year at the nursery and who knows that he must leave and move on to the preschool. This narrative invention is a formidable pedagogical analysis, a “live film” of the nursery through the eyes and mind of a child. And at the same time it is an example, an exercise, of Bertolini’s idea of empathy which he preferred to call the ability of the educator to place themselves in the shoes of the learner, trying to understand reality from their point of view.

 

 

Topics

 

Graphic psychomotricity in early childhood

Alberto Manzi

If we educate a child to exercise the eye-arm-hand-fingers in any kind of coordinated movement, not only are we developing pre-graphic skills but we will also have stimulated the child’s imagination and intelligence. It is precisely the combination of these movements which allows us to accurately develop other skills, drawing, writing, folding, cutting...

 

Space and well-being in the nursery school

Beate Weyland

In recent history, nursery schools have become a place for experimenting the educational space, understood as an environment for children’s relations, experiences and learning. In Terenzo, in the province of Bolzano, the foundations of the educational project can be found in the dialogue between pedagogical competences and the architectural design of the school and its spaces.

 

Children and families at the museum: educational paths in and out of school

Veronica Russo

To design educational paths in a museum for children and families, we need to consider a number of variables: the analysis of the context, the type of visit, the methods and tools of mediation, but above all the characteristics of the visitors and their learning needs. Museums for children must attract the curiosity of an audience that wants not only to observe but also to be active.

 

The abandoned childhood of the 21st century

The case of the “children of our Lady” at the Real Casa Santa dell’Annunziata orphanage in Naples

Romina Amicolo

In the 19th century, foundlings’ orphanages, shelters for both illegitimate children and those whose families could not look after them, aimed to prevent infanticide but in fact due to the very high mortality rates of the children who ended up there replaced “private infanticide with a kind of social infanticide”.

 

 

Experiences

 

Towards “spontaneous” learning to read and write

Claudio and Tiziana Damiani

An educational experience on the introduction of literacy skills based on a method of continuity from preschool to primary school. To facilitate children's identification and connection of phonemes and graphemes, pictures are used to suggest a relationship between the sound and shape of an object…

 

Dedicating time to the natural quality of education

Dina Grandi, Chiara Gramantieri, Laura Giulianini, Valentina Montanari, Morena Romano

On the trail of the natural rights of children defined by Gianfranco Zavalloni and his “Pedagogy of the Snail”, right from early childhood nurseries can guide and develop children's direct relations with the outside world and the sensorimotor experiences it offers. The time spent constructing “natural quality” is not made of extraordinary facts but rather everyday life, made of concrete things that become knowledge.

 

Vicinity and transformations

Cinzia Guandalini

The “L’aquilone” nursery school in Ferrara, damaged beyond use by the earthquake, created the conditions for a participatory project leading to the construction of the new school and the “Giardino più bello che c’è” (“the most beautiful garden around”): an open-air space designed as a learning environment.

 

Playing a story, reading a game

Daniela Pellegrini, Linda Zambotti

At nursery and preschool, reading and telling stories is not just about the children listening, but becomes the point of departure for animated activities in which psychomotor play is the natural environment for the children to express themselves and live out their thoughts, a significant moment of observation for the adult on the way children process their experiences and understand the text.