The teacher training in the face of the reform of middle school (1962)

Abstract

Although recent literature has brought to the attention of scholars the need of a long-term reflection on the history of secondary school teacher training in Italy, many issues remain to be investigated. Among these, of significant importance is the establishment of the unified middle school in 1962, presented as an absolute novelty in the national education system. From this point of view, the reconstruction of the debate that arose in those years in pedagogical environments shows the limits of an inadequate education, conceived since ever as a response to an elitist school and heedless of the curricula inaugurated by the reform. The paper proposes to investigate these aspects in relation to the definition of an unprecedented image of the teacher, to be delineated also – and above all – in its initial acculturation. The aim is to bring out the cultural changes, the identity representations of teachers and their social recognisability, in a period that marks the crisis of the neo-idealist model and the slow affirmation of a new way of conceiving the teaching function.