Service Learning and Innovation Networks: the proposal of the Avanguardie Educative Movement for Italian schools

Abstract

This paper discusses the Avanguardie Educative (AE) Movement, an initiative by Indire aimed at transforming the traditional Italian education system. AE seeks to promote educational and organizational innovation in schools by shifting from transmissive teaching models to more flexible, competency-based approaches. It emphasizes a participatory, collaborative framework for educational change, incorporating various actors like regional hubs, leading schools, and adopting schools. The service-learning concept is central to AE’s approach, aiming to bridge formal education with community engagement, fostering active student participation and real-world problem solving. AE encourages schools to adopt and adapt service-learning within their curricular activities, evolving it from sporadic, extracurricular projects into a core part of their educational offering. This framework has been particularly relevant in addressing modern challenges, such as the pandemic, environmental crises, and social inequalities. In AE's innovation proposals, service-learning is the frame of reference for activities linking school and territory that allows for the creation of a meaningful relationship between inside and outside the school. AE operates through a network of schools and a series of dissemination activities, including peer-to-peer exchanges, workshops and the development of practical tools such as toolkits and guidelines within which SL represents a proposal for innovation. In recent years, a line of research has been developed to analyse the level of institutionalization of service-learning in Italy with the aim of accompanying schools and developing their self-assessment competences.