Teacher Training for Secondary Schools in Italy: Professional Role and Reflective Practice

Resumen

In the first part of this contribution the main guidelines that have characterised the training of secondary teachers in Italy in the last 15 years will be drawn. They will highlight the legislative and regulatory issues for the completion of university education in order to gain access to the paths of employment in secondary schools. In particular, we will emphasise the organisational and political conditions that have given form and content to the paths of specialisation/ teaching qualification and, on the basis of a widely established literature in the current debate, we will reflect on how much and how these settings correspond to precise cultural views that feed a certain idea of school, of teacher and ultimately of society. In the second part, starting from direct experience of initial training for secondary school teachers, we will resume the steps of a reflective practice on the political and cultural role for the teacher, whose valorisation must be explicitly invoked in the context of training and refresher courses, to complete the process of professional preparation adequate for the challenges of our time.