Il sistema di formazione duale in Italia: il progetto "Integrazione scuola-lavoro in alternanza potenziata, apprendistato di primo livello, e apprendistato professionalizzante" della Fondazione A. Badoni

Abstract

Is there an actual possibility, for Italy, to develop an educational dual system like the German one? Would this possibility be economically affordable? Could it be positively welcomed by Italian schools and VET institutions? What pedagogical basis on? And what about the legal ones? Collected and reviewed a valuable amount of literary contributions, this essay tries to answer the above questions, with particular regard about the Italian productive and educational systems, characterized by small and medium enterprises and, on the educational side, by a quite deep tendency to avoid contacts between schools and companies. The literature review focuses on three aspects. First, the economic advantages in implementing systems of dual education, particularly in the legal framework of the apprenticeship and in small and medium businesses. Second, the points of view of legal and pedagogical researches on the issues of: school-and-work integrated education, dual systems, apprenticeship, and school-and-work alternating training, presented together with statistical studies about the diffusion of such working-educational schemes in Italy. Third, the process of assessing and validating skills developed in the mentioned contexts. Within the body of the essay, then, the three main results of the examined studies are presented. First, there is no evidence against a successful implementation of a dual educational system in Italy; contrariwise, it would be a favorable opportunity for companies, youth, educational institutions, and the social texture in general. Second, the Italian regulation allows a fully and properly structured activation of dual educational system routes. Furthermore, considering the reviewed pedagogical studies, the literature and the debate seems mature enough to be able to advise how to orientate formative plans and programs, taking into particular account the – not always unjustified – critical voices and the replies about the most relevant issues. Third, there is the strong possibility that a properly functioning process of skills assessment and validation can be the corner stone of such dual educational system courses, synthesizing the acquisition of knowledge and abilities to be spent both in the education system and in the labor market. One last chapter, finally, is devoted to the presentation of a case study: the dual educational system experimented by the Fondazione A. Badoni of Lecco (Lombardy, Italy), which, exploiting also the legal framework of the newly reformed apprenticeship for school students, allows its participants to obtain a VET diploma working two or three days a week in manufacturing companies and attending a VET school for the rest of the week.