The convergence between Ferrière’s vision of new education and reading comprehension as an educational emergency: a research project on reciprocal teaching

Ferrière proposes a new school able to enhance the potential of the students, respecting their individual specificities and personal ways and rhythms of learning. This requires good relationship between the knowledge teaching and the transmission of learning techniques. In this pedagogical perspective, this paper illustrates the design of a project in the start-up phase. The project is conducted according to the EBID research orientation and it is aimed to create a fruitful relationship between the most effective educational-didactic theories and teaching practice. The project faces reading comprehension in primary school as a relevant problem. To this end, the project intends to experiment the RC-RT program (optimized by SApIE) to verify its effectiveness in third classes of three Italian regions. all the classes are attended by students with intellectual disability, specific learning disabilities, learning difficulties and / or with linguistic and cultural disadvantages. The research also consists to realize an adequate model of teacher training. The sample consists of 30 experimental classes and 18 control classes, for a total of 836 pupils, of which 156 with special educational needs. The research group predict a gain in the learning of the experimental classes compared to the control classes, in line with or higher than that recorded in the previous experimentation.