Through training projects, intensive workshops and workshops, REAL lab dialogues creatively with the worlds of continuing education and school
Here you can consult all the projects in the field of didactics and its methodologies, training and educational paths for children and adults, teaching, seminars offered to students, teachers, educators and trainers.
Education is a multifaceted context, where to apply experimentation and methodological innovations that can not only provide knowledge, but also enrich the very way of thinking and interpreting the world, to be able to respond creatively to the unexpected events that increasingly distinguish our time.
The training methods range from the more classical ones, such as the frontal lesson, the "circle time", the upside-down class, and role-playing games, to those based on more participative and collaborative approaches such as participatory action research, up to that type of training approach focused on self-care and self-knowledge.Our concept of training is therefore not to be understood in terms of acquiring new knowledge, but in terms of relational learning through active listening and self-knowledge.
For this reason, also the emotion listening that takes place "during the encounter with the other during the field research, requires a process of listening to oneself in the relationship. However, a paradox is immediately evident: if on the one hand the formation of the person is considered more and more important, at the same time it must be noted that what is missing in the humanistic formation of individuals is precisely a path of growth and self-listening of the person himself. The school is increasingly concerned with producing notions and increasing skills but does not devote sufficient space to the formation of the person himself, in particular the ability to listen, as individuals in relation to their emotions during the relationship with the other". (Bonetti, Apprendimento a KMZero, CISU, Roma).
We are too concerned about educating children's personalities to have lost sight of the fact that it is primarily the educator (parent, teacher, ...) who must educate and care for his or her personality in order to play his or her role effectively and appropriately. (Carl Gustav Jung. Lo sviluppo della personalità. Bollati Boringhieri).
Teachers and parents go back to school, Milan. Picture by Roberta Bonetti.
By workshop we mean to refer to its original meaning as a workshop-laboratory in which something is built materially. Today, with workshops, we also refer to moments of encounter in which all participants are active protagonists, discuss among themselves, share ideas and elaborate solutions, achieving tangible results. It is not important if the result is material or immaterial, if a product idea or a creative idea comes out of the workshop, if you work on a physical prototype or an abstract concept, the important thing is that the result is the result of mutual contamination and the participation of everyone. A workshop is organized to do research, to brainstorm, to search together new questions, or answers to interesting questions, sharing the design experience with everyone, organizers and participants.
A Lab is a valuable training tool that, thanks to a strong component of interactivity, stimulates learning through comparison and exchange, not only with the teacher but also and above all with the other participants. Moreover, the Lab allows those present to develop team working skills, to learn to listen, to listen to themselves and to evaluate themselves and finally to acquire greater confidence by performing and working constantly within a group, a team.
Summer workshop, Municipality of Levico. Picture by Claudia Magnani.
During the course of the year we organize seminars which not infrequently, when they are small in number, take the form of workshops. They are experiences of study and in-depth study of a theme, resulting in moments of group work interspersed with the sharing of ideas and reflections.
The Conferences, in turn also characterized by spaces dedicated to workshops and laboratories, are moments of encounter in which expert and prepared people bring contributions with the aim of confronting each other and the participants. The conferences, in fact, are not only occupied by relations and debate among experts, but are characterized by moments of participation, debate, reflections with the intention of soliciting and enriching all participants.
Anthropology seminar.
The study of the context and the specificity of each situation preserves us from the possibility of adopting simplistic solutions. The different projects present on REAL-lab are characterized by a hybrid methodology that combines different styles and different approaches in a perspective that focuses on what emerges from the field rather than the presumed reliability of one method over the other.
In the educational field we mainly use the research-action theorized by René Barbier, a long term transformative approach based on the identification of the needs of the subjects involved in first person together with the researcher to improve the present situation, without renouncing to simpler styles, always focused on the relationship and the person as a jigsaw or upside-down teaching. A single initiative can also employ different didactic methodologies to underline that the procedural aspect is an element of fundamental importance for our work.
Walking on a map. Picture by Roberta Bonetti.
