A pedagogical experience for building interdisciplinary and longitudinal curricula of Civic Education: a case study in Italy

Teachers implement the curriculum according to their own epistemological and ideological beliefs about learning. Consequently, what teachers believe about CE goals matters. Students' needs and school context are crucial in choosing the target topics, and they reflect the overall role of the individual in a society with particular cultural values. Through the community of practice, educators share their concerns about a topic and deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis.

In order to meet the global changes and international goals, the current CE curricula need to be revised. The state law 92/2019 attempted to redefine the subject by promoting its cross-disciplinary and shared evaluation. Therefore, the authors and their colleagues from nursery, primary and middle schools of the same institute have dedicated 25 hours to formulating and coordinating lesson plans focusing on five main areas in CE, namely 1) play and rules, 2) environment, 3) digital identity, 4) affections, and 5) inclusion. The chosen methodology can be roughly defined as action research.

While working independently, the different groups still managed to follow the same guidelines and converged towards the same issues. The first outcome is a set of hands-on lesson plans which guide students, aged 3-14 years, through the five pillars of CE consistently across all disciplines. The experience of sharing the same task caused some tensions due to the perceived burden of such a demanding assignment, however, the combination of expertise and teamwork resulted in a remarkable journey towards responsibility and innovation.

Keywords: Civic Education, Community of Practice, teachers’ expertise, on-the-job teachers’ training.

Authors: Lucia Bombieri, Stefania Solazzo & Alessandra Trevisan

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This paper was submitted to the call for papers organised in 2022 and it has been reviewed by external peer-reviewers. See here all the articles selected within the same call.