‘On Monday afternoons we go to discover the world’: Understanding a traditional Italian primary school's adaption to a student-driven approach to learning

Abstract

Across the globe, increasing attention is being paid to curricular learning outside the classroom. While there is no Italian national outdoor learning policy, there is a growing wave of lecturers, teachers, schools, environmental education centres, who are developing this field. This paper examines one rural primary school’s attempts to incorporate learning outside the classroom into their rather conventional teaching practices. Michael Fullan's seven premises of ‘change knowledge’ are employed to lend a deeper interrogation of the findings. Since the boundaries of inquiry were so clear, in terms of context, space-time, and people, a case study design was used. Data generation featured two principal methods and took place over a six-year period. First, there were open-ended interviews with each of the two principal educators; two focus group interviews with the entire staff team; and large focus groups with senior pupils. Field notes from participant observation and informal conversations were also used. The findings highlighted the importance of alliances between teachers, parents, and the wider community; the need for pupils to have the power to shape what is being learned; and the value of having pupil groups with different ages and abilities. The teachers stressed how crucial it was for pupils to learn how to critically refine the questions they were asking about their ‘places’. Further analysis of the data showed that Fullan's premises of motivation and commitment, learning in context, capacity building, and persistence and flexibility were especially present.