ALUNNI ANTICIPATARI E DE-STANDARDIZZAZIONE DEL CICLO SCOLASTICO: UNA NUOVA POLITICA PER L’INFANZIA?

Translated title of the contribution: [Autom. eng. transl.] EARLY PUPILS AND DE-STANDARDIZATION OF THE SCHOOL CYCLE: A NEW CHILD POLICY?

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Abstract

In application of the Italian Law 30/2003 reforming the whole school system, parents can make the option to enroll their children to infant school and primary school’s first year according to more flexible age requirements than in the past: children can be three/six years old by April the 30th of the reference year (before was December, the 31th) and moreover in the infant school since 2006 have been instituted “advance” classes for 2 years old children (“spring classes”). All these innovations make increase heterogeneity within the learning group, along with the augmented freedom of parents’ choice. That is to say, the State has liberalized the times for acceding to children education and this important innovation will have impacts on school organization, pedagogy, psychology and social representation of the childhood; hence if the number of early pupils will increase, it will take place a new mode of interpretation of the link childhood-school-social times. With the intermediation of the parent’s choice, the traditional time-markers are losing their importance from now on, and the child development process will be less standardized than in the past. Through the lens of sociology of education and childhood my aim is to review the current landscape of “de-standardization” of schooling, by assuming that it is an ending result of a long-term change (from the centralistic to the autonomy vision), which has provoked a rupture in the uniformity principle applied to educational system, and it still push forward for a more personalized and privatized view of the infant education. After having traced a historical and social scenario (including fundamental values, mechanisms of functioning, and a focus on school times as forms of social control), I go through a review of the most recent school reforms waves towards “de-structuration”, especially under the pressures that family and local community have made over school units. Then I design the main impacts of the early school entrance right on the schools (in terms of rates of application at a regional level with Miur data), but also to understand how the different stakeholders are carrying out this reform: pros (parents and principals) and cons (teachers and childhood specialists) the early school entrance, with the help of qualitative data provided by Miur). Going beyond the opposition between contrasting social interests, it is worth questioning which sort of cultural change is likely to occur whether children can be recognized read to go to school independently from their age; and who has the task/right to decide when they are ready and to assess the consequences of an early school experience. Hence the essay aims to delineate a children’s point of view about the early school entrance and to question wheather – by this new attitude towards the school times – a new kind of children agency is rising up.
Translated title of the contribution[Autom. eng. transl.] EARLY PUPILS AND DE-STANDARDIZATION OF THE SCHOOL CYCLE: A NEW CHILD POLICY?
Original languageItalian
Pages (from-to)7-30
Number of pages24
JournalSTUDI DI SOCIOLOGIA
Publication statusPublished - 2014

Keywords

  • ANTICIPO SCOLASTICO
  • EARLY SCHOOL ENTRY
  • EDUCATIONAL WELFARE
  • INFANT SCHOOL
  • INFANTHOOD-SOCIETY LINK
  • INNOVAZIONE SOCIALE
  • POLITICHE SCOLASTICHE
  • PRE-PRIMARY SCHOOL
  • RAPPORTO INFANZIA-SOCIETA'
  • RAPPORTO SCUOLA-SOCIETA'
  • SCHOOL-SOCIETY LINK
  • SCHOOLING POLICY
  • SCUOLA DELL'INFANZIA
  • SOCIAL INNOVATION
  • SOCIOLOGIA DELL'EDUCAZIONE
  • SOCIOLOGIA DELL'INFANZIA
  • SOCIOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD
  • SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION
  • WELFARE EDUCATIVO

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