Inclusion at the time of school-work alternance: new challenges and perspectives for connection between school, formation and world of job

Abstract

The historical moment that we are experiencing is characterized by several technological changes as well as by demographic ones. So, the world of work is even more flexible and in continuous evolution. It follows that it’s increasingly present the need to promote an authentic knowledge that can combine theory and practice, knowledges and abilities with the aim to develop competences. So, school becomes the educative agency that has to combine formative needs of individual with competences required by the job market, with the purpose of offering equal opportunities to all its students; this is the perspective offered by Capability Approach, whose declination in a scholastic context can allow the construction of the school for everyone, able to guarantee equity and develop of the own capabilities. School-work alternance represents an important didactic strategy in which single individuals or small heterogeneous groups of students experiment into situation, acquire and improve social relationships and professional competences, creating, in this way, a climate of personal realization and inclusion. Today, in Italian school, this approach can become an essential didactic methodology, able to value diversity and encourage even more the inclusive process. School-work alternance represents a valiant formative moment, because if it is oriented against the scholastic dispersion and every kind of discrimination, it allows the improvement and the promotion of scholastic inclusion for all the students and above all for those ones with special educational needs. Based on this reflection, in this article we present the issue of the relevance that school-work alternance can have as an educational activity to be implemented in the secondary school contexts: how it can be appreciated as an integral part of the educational and formative process of all the students and as a valiant element in the life project for all those ones with special educational needs. The contribution presents a case study that has as object the diffusion of school-work alternance in two scholastic contexts, that promote the scholastic inclusion. These two schools, one in Milan and the other in Palermo, involved78 students and 12 teachers as tutors for the paths of school-work alternance. Through this research we wanted to verify the validity of the planning model of school-work alternance with the purpose of improving the competences of reflexing, evaluating, relationship and critical re-elaboration in the students. The main tool we used for the inquiry was the focus group, that favoured a deep analysis and it allowed to gather, in a limited time, a variety of points of view about the inquiried topic, but we also used a questionnaire, as pre and post-test, and a check-list for the systematic observation. In particular we wanted to observe the changes produced with the application of the Law 107/2015 and the results highlighted in the areas of potential personal and professional development of the students at the end of efficient school-work alternance projects.