Learning outcomes

1) Give future social assistants a pedagogical approach to the dynamics of adult life and the adults’ different roles;
2) Learn to identify in the adults, aspects that improve their empowerment whether they are in comfort or discomfort situations.
The course is based on this question: “How to accompany adults that are calling on the social service?”
First step --> To know:
- the vital steps that mark the adult becoming (historical overview)
- the category “adult” set in relation to some cultural models
- the critical implications of becoming adults (self-care, child care, care of elderly parents, community care)
Second step --> In practice:
- the experience knowledge to guide the social assistant's job
- pedagogical interview with adults: participatory maieutics

Program

The following topics will be faced during the lessons:
- The concept of age and its transformations.
- Women and men in the work of becoming adults: changes, steps, de-structuring and re-composition
- Self and Others’ care as characteristic of adult life
- educational paths with adults (the narrative practice in adulthood and old age)
- The group dimension in social work with adults (linguistic, religious, generational, geographical communities)

n. 3 mandatory texts:
1 - Daniele Loro, Lavorare con gli adulti. Aspetti pedagogici nella professione dell'assistente sociale. Dispensa 2015-2016 (la dispensa è disponibile presso la Cartoleria Ateneo, Lungadige Porta Vittoria, 37. www.ateneovr.it).
2 - Danilo Dolci, Conversazioni contadine, Il Saggiatore, Milano 2014.
3 – A choice between the followings:
- Rosanna Cima, Pratiche narrative per una pedagogia dell’invecchiare, Franco Angeli, Milano 2012.
- Silvia Aru, Matteo Putilli, Forme, Spazi e tempi della marginalità. Un itinerario concettuale, Società geografica italiana, Roma 2014, disponibile su: https://www.academia.edu/10194822/Numero_monografico_Forme_spazi_e_tempi_della_marginalit%C3%A0_Bollettino_della_Societ%C3%A0_Geografica_Italiana_XVI_2014_n._1
- Luigina Mortari, Apprendere dall’esperienza. Il pensare riflessivo nella formazione, Carocci, Roma 2003.
- Rosanna Cima, Culture della cura. Mediazione culturale ed etnoclinica in ambito educativo, sociale, sanitario, PresentArsì, Castiglione d/Stiv. 2014.

Educational organization
Lessons are structured so that there is, in addition to the contribution from the teacher’s theoretical part, a thinking moment shared between students in order to build a knowledge starting from the interactions between theory, students’ situated knowledges and pedagogical knowledge related to operational practices.

Examination Methods

The exam will be an oral interview with direct questions aimed to probe the rational study of the theories in the studied texts.