“Avanguardie Educative”: paths of innovation for schools

This article presents “Avanguardie Educative” (http://avanguardieeducative.indire.it/), a cultural movement founded to gather the most significant experiences of organizational and educational innovation in Italian schools and encourage transformation of the traditional lecture-based school model. With the aim of supporting an innovation process that has emerged from bottom –up reasoning, INDIRE (National Institute for Documentation, Innovation and Educational Research) and 22 founder member schools (advanced schools) have produced a manifesto based on seven pillars that inspired the “Gallery of 12 Ideas” –experiences of innovation re-elaborated by researchers based on experience gained in certain Italian schools, which, some time ago, began to gradually change the organization, school time and space for teaching in ways that would encourage pupils to take an active role in teaching –learning processes. The Avanguardie Educative movement currently includes 416 schools that are trying out the ideas, with support from the advanced schools and INDIRE, aided by a blended coaching process designed to build a professional community of practice.