Teacher training paths between neuroeducation and professional learning community

Abstract

This paper starts from the belief that a school capable of feeling and making community is regarded as a privileged context to promote both organizational and relational well-being. Teacher training is possible in the intersection between the concepts of Neuroeducation and learning community. Moreover, the concept of "school-as-a-community" interacts with that of "peer learning", which is configured as a methodology capable of simultaneously promoting the ability of realization of the individual and of the organization. From a methodological point of view, this work documents a research project carried out with a group of 69 teachers of the first cycle of education. Moving from the problems and questions arising around their conception of school as a learning organization and their perception of the teaching relationship in neuroeducational terms, the project has been articulated into two phases. In the first one, we coped with the analysis, reflection, problematization and confrontation on the teaching profession, on the deep significance of the teaching acts and on any possible discrepancy between what is planned and what is actually achieved in practice. In the second phase, we tutored and mentored teachers in the study of the dynamics of the educational relationship in terms learning strategies, neuro-behaviors and paying particular attention to those cognitive-somatic markers implemented in teaching/learning practice. The work highlights those aspects connected to the processes of cooperative learning among teachers, considered as systematic processes of review and revision of the practices put in place by a professional community, as well as some elements of Neuroeducation which are functional to a wider knowledge of the tools and strategies available to teachers for the implementation of their teaching relationships.