The assembly of Institutional Pedagogy in a technical-vocational institute: training with teachers

The article delves into the Institutional Pedagogy (IP) class assembly as a device for working on the conflicts of everyday school life that contribute to school dropout. Starting with the informal experiments of a group of teachers from a technical and professional institute in the outskirts of Bologna, the PNRR training course on the instruments of democracy at school is reconstructed, which involved some researchers from the University of Bologna and a movement of active pedagogy teachers from the city. The life stories of students who develop a conflict with school are the epiphenomenon of a broad process rooted in inequality, welfare defunding and the consequent disintegration of social networks, and didactics can do little to address the root of the issue. The IP class assembly is one of the devices through which a real redistribution of power between young people and adults can be experimented at school, the students’ taking the floor and the collective construction of rules, with the conviction that real prevention of school dropout is built with effort and through a radical questioning of the teacher’s posture.