Promoting soft-skills in school.

An operative proposal: collaborative space-design

Abstract

The research investigates the learning environments re-designed by students (aged 14-19) at the Giulio Verne Professional Institute in Rome. The aim was to experiment and identify positive aspects and critical issues to develop a students’ self-organised design model to re-design schools’ environments, in the line of the studies by Sugata Mitra regarding the “Self-Organised Mediation Environments (SOME)”.  A critical approach induces the participants to reach the objectives through hermeneutic and reflexive modalities. After the Reform of Professional Institutes in Italy, the learning personalisation, and the self- awareness of the students as protagonists of their own learning path have become more relevant, and this model encourages the autonomous students’ learning. The teacher as a mediator must review his role by promoting the active and autonomous students’ learning.