Interpretare Dewey per innovare la didattica. L’esempio dell’Osservatorio per la biodiversità in Sicilia

When reading an author like Dewey the first time, the aim is to know about contents, the second, it is clear that some models, which could be, at first sight, very simple and easily employable in everyday practice, are to be rethought, in order to be used in a contemporary context, and they cannot be included in the present repertoire, as they were designed when conceived. These aspects, present in Deweys’s work, have been at the core of our interpretation as empiricists, in different research works, but, in particular, they inspired the example of the teaching and learning practice, described in the contribution herewith introduced, aimed at mobilizing some requisites that Dewey considers essential, such as the need for social and experiential engagement, which every teaching and learning project should support to be really effective and democratic. The idea at the basis of the project was to develop a series of teaching and learning activities addressed to teachers and pupils from a group of lower secondary and secondary schools in Palermo, which participated in a regional project to create and disseminate biodiversity concepts linked to the identity of their territory.