Learning outcomes

Educational experiences are grounded in relationships. Educators have an active role in these relationships and, as adults, their role is to lead the educative experiences in order to acknowledge children and to support the flourishing of their life. In order to get this aim the educator’s competences have to be active, rather than fixed. Competences have continually to be replaced in accordance with the different settings and subjects involved in the educative relationships.
To build flexible competences, the educators need to reflect on their professional experience, in particular on their personal stance.

Starting from this premise, the course aims to provide students with:
- knowledge about some educative perspectives focused on relationships (such as the care perspectives);
- development of reflexive competence, in particular on personal standpoint;
- knowledge about educative methods to be employ in different educative settings, such as early childhood services, extra school activities, foster and care centres etc.

The course is articulated in two parts. The first one aims at presenting some educative theories, with particular attention to care perspective, which focuses on people in terms of their connectedness and relationships with others (books A and B).
The second part of the course aims at introducing educative methods, taking into consideration the different several setting in which education occurs:
- early childhood services;
- services for children and adolescents with behavioural problems;
For this second part the texts are to be choose from a list, divided following the previous two setting (books C and D).

Other resources and references will be available in the e-learning section, that will be open at the beginning of the course.

Program

Lessons will be planned using:
- theoretical presentations;
- group activities;
- reflexive activities, focused on videos, narratives and other texts.
The resources for group and reflexive activities will be available on-line.

Textbooks and references:
1. Dewey, J. (1990) Le fonti di una scienza dell’educazione, LaNuovaItalia: Firenze.
2. Mortari, L. (2006) La pratica dell’aver cura, Mondadori: Milano.
3. Mortari, L. e Mazzoni, V. (2012) La pedagogia come pragmatica dell'educazione , Cortina Editrice (The text will be available at Cortina from Jenuary 2014).

Examination Methods

The learning outcomes of students will assess with a written examination; in some cases an oral examination will integrate the written one.