Cittadinanza onlife. Ricerca partecipata, scrittura collaborativa, sviluppo professionale degli insegnanti

The essay analyzes two research&professional development projects under a methodological point of view. The CREMIT Center of the Catholic University of Milan has conducted these two training projects simultaneously in various schools that organized continuing education courses for local teachers. An integral part of the proposal of the research&professional development project was participating in the writing of the book Crescere Onlife. L’educazione civica digitale progettata da 74 insegnanti (Growing Onlife. Digital civic education designed by 74 teachers). This exercise aimed at enhancing and shedding light on the Media Literacy skills on both ICT and Digital School. The methodology used is the Participatory Research, viewed within the broader framework of the New Educational Research. This framework brings a perspective that goes beyond the canonical scheme under two point of views: I) educational research which is generally by the two fields of theoretical research and applied research; and II) the juxtaposition of the Theorist’s role and the Practitioner’s role. The teachers from childhood to high school during the writing were asked to discuss about a taxonomy which was obtained by the confrontation of texts of Lowry (2003) and the Italian group of Collective Industrial Writing. The trainers lead the teachers to express themselves as researchers in a blended context. Trainers helped teachers to promote: I) a reflection on digital citizenship within communities of practice; II) the adoption of collaborative writing; III) the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) learning process; and IV) the use of “coaching” as a professional development tool. The essay analyzes the pedagogical orientations and the educational professional development practices adopted, and then links these experiences to the framework of onlife citizenship and to the process of citizenship education.