The Hera teaches you a vocation... at school project is based on an integrated methodology, aimed at promoting two distinct and complementary learning processes: in the academic institutions involved (aimed at the pupils and, by extension, the teachers) and in the Group, among the key players of the professional system.
The guiding principle is “designing, organising, and directing the dissemination of knowledge externally reinforces knowledge management skills and corporate professional identity internally”.
Teaching is learning: the project seen from the knowledge management corporate perspective
In any professional system, the management of knowledge-based capital requires the joint implementation of a specific set of skills, starting with the shared recognition of the importance of the topic in strategic, organisational, and professional terms.
For the bearers of knowledge, this involves carrying out various operations, as an ordinary part of usual work processes, from outlining what they know (especially in highlighting relations between various concepts) to conveying and developing it. Beyond the various techniques, knowledge management is greatly facilitated by the capacity for self-reflection of the various players involved: those who convey, but also those who receive. Reflecting on what one knows, how one learnt it, what the key elements are thereof, what portrayals would be appropriate to make the meaning obvious strengthens awareness, capacity for action and vocational identity.
Integrating corporate knowledge with academic curricula: an active and participatory approach
In order to be effective, the integration between academic curricula (curriculum studies or “by subject”) and corporate skills (the “world of work”) requires the creation of specific learning micro-contexts, through which the relations between “theory” and “practice” are pointed out. This is more effective if one adopts a joint constructive approach in which each bearer of knowledge (teachers and corporate representatives) is committed to understanding the various specific characteristics and to negotiating a shared framework, consistent with the cognitive characteristics of the recipients.
That’s what the Hera teaches you a vocation… at school project has established, around a collection of principles shared by the company and the academic institutions involved. To sum up:
- an active approach, centred on the development on the part of the students of a capacity for interpretation (“producing questions”) and minimal plans of action (“looking for answers”), both on an individual and collective basis;
- focusing on know-why aspects, the framework meaning ofknow-what, seen, above all, as the introduction of key terms (structuring of thoughts through linguistic actions);
- scalarity, starting from a common base (consistent with what has already been achieved by the ITIS in the first two-year period) and moving on to gradual specialisation in the second two-year period and the fifth year based on the contents of the individual structures;
- interdisciplinary approach, through highlighting relations between technical aspects and the economic-legal context;
- alternating (as far as possible) between classroom-based learning and activities in the field:
i) individual, autonomous, and semi-structured activities (e.g. observation of life situations - one’s own home, academic institution, etc. - to search for “signs” of what has been introduced);
ii) collective-structured activities (guided tours to plants);
- integration with teachers, in terms of “fine” planning of classroom activities and assessments, in order to reduce cognitive costs as far as possible and reinforce the meaningfulness of learning.
