Teaching styles and school models: A survey among teachers in post-university training in Italy

There is a lively cultural debate going on in Italy about the preparation of secondary school teachers. Increasingly more questions arise concerning strategies for uniting university training with school-based training. During the period 1998-2010 secondary school teachers were prepared through a two-year university study, including part of an in-school training to be carried out at a school, in contact with in-service teachers and a specific scholastic context. The grounds for this university preparation was that a degree in one branch of learning, whether it be literature, mathematics, sciences or languages, was not enough for teaching in school. Instead, it was necessary to prepare a didactically oriented training curriculum. Hence, the founding of the SSSE, that is, the School of Specialisation in Secondary Education, organised according to regional authorities. For the research we are presenting, the SSSE taken into consideration were in the Regions of: Veneto and Lombardy for Northern Italy; Lazio for Central Italy; and Campania for Southern Italy. The purpose of the research was to highlight the school and university training experience of teachers with future expectations of being professionally employed in schools and in direct contact with students.