The teachers? More prepared than professors: “Investing in educational innovation”

It would be wrong to say that elementary school teachers are better than middle school teachers, but, according to the data of the Agnelli Foundation and of Invalsi, it can be said that they are more suited to their role than secondary school teachers. The data dates back to 2014, but has only now been reworked.

Observers entered 207 comprehensive Italian institutes who attended the lessons and evaluated them. The research involved 1,628 teachers and professors of Italian and mathematicsto. According to the results, one third of teachers in primary schools are very effective, only one in ten are inadequate to do their job. On the other hand, only a quarter of the professors are trained in middle school, while one in six turned out to be adequate.

More than 23% of the teachers observed have «excellent ability to explain in a structured way, that is, to perform at their best the traditional transmissive lesson from the chair», 60% is at an average level, 17% is inadequate. Almost 30% are “particularly effective in integrating explanations with the proposal to students of well-structured learning activities with also the articulated use of teaching materials and tools”.

From this observation came the indications for the new teaching strategies to be adopted and the needs of the school. Research is not an accusation against teachers, but a photograph of a situation which sees a better preparation in teachers who have a structured training path with a specific degree that does not exist for middle and high schools. In training, teachers learn the teaching method that is not taught to those with a degree in mathematics or literature.

So he explained Andrea Gavosto director of the Agnelli Foundation: «The most comforting results coming from primary school teachers can have several explanations. But it is reasonable to think that they also depend on a different training path, which places greater emphasis on teaching knowledge and skills. As we know, on the other hand, in Italy a good knowledge of the discipline has always and only been required of middle school and high school teachers, while little attention has been given to didactic training, today really reduced to a minimum. A repeated mistake, which even in the months of distance learning during the pandemic had negative effects ». Middle and high school teachers know their subject, but they don’t always know how to teach it.

It serves, according to the authors of the research, a specific investment in teacher training. This should be the first step to cover the delay of Italian students compared to those of most of the rest of Europe. This is the proposal: “Investing in educational innovation and teacher training must be an objective of the Italian plan in view of the Next Generation EU”. For now, however, this item does not appear in the plan.

Hard the response of the Flc-Cgil through Francesco Sinopoli: «The definition of rankings from which judgments are generated that contrast primary teachers with those of lower secondary school is simplistic and incorrect. We are once again witnessing the exploitation of some data used to simplify, if not to humiliate, not only the work of the researchers who collected and processed them, but above all the work of teachers ».

“The Agnelli Foundation is the promoter of yet another vulgar, unacceptable attack on Italian teachers”, declared Luca Cangemi, national school manager of the PCI. «The results of the“ Observations in the classroom ”project are the starting point for a campaign to de-legitimize the public school and the work of teachers. A campaign that appears particularly poisonous and irresponsible due to the very delicate moment in which it is launched, while in every institute in Italy they try to face a phase of extraordinary difficulty ».