Piero Bertolini and the Italian Phenomenological Movement in Education

Beginning with a brief outline of the profile of PieroBertolini and the origins of phenomenological thinking in the sphere of education in Italy, the article will focus on two main areas in which Bertolini conceived of phenomenology being applied to education: Phenomenology as an approach for understanding educational experience and as a theoretical framework for a pedagogical epistemology. This paper will concentrate in particular on the latter, which was the core of Bertolini’s phenomenological thinking aiming at building a pedagogy as a rigorous science. Finally, after outlining some recent developments in Bertolini’s legacy, some active examples of topics in which phenomenology is currently a living matter in education are mentioned. The article argues that, especially in Italy, phenomenology provides educational researchers a (moderate) new realistic ontology beyond both postmodernism and neo-positivism, new insights for empirical research in education and a fruitful dialogue with neuroscience beyond brain-based approaches.