Students’ self-organised design of educational environments through work-related learning

The research investigates the learning environments re-designed by students (aged 14-19) at the at 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, referring in part to experiments by Sugata Mitra regarding the Self-Organised Mediation Environments (SOME; Mitra & Dangwal, 2010). The experiment has been done to motivate students in new way of carrying out work-related learning. The action-research method with the ideographic purpose has been used: 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 relevant and this model encourages the autonomous students’ learning. The teacher as a mediator must review his role and promote the active and autonomous students’ learning.