Navigating Complexity in Schools: Observation, Self-Regulation, and Self-Efficacy as Compasses in the Training of Support Teachers

Supporting trainee teachers in building a reflective professional identity oriented toward inclusion is a significant challenge for universities, which see the Specialization Courses for Support Teachers as a privileged vantage point for exploring the role of future teachers. Specifically, within the training program at the University of Macerata, students have highlighted difficulties in exercising their agency due to the increased bureaucratization of schools, the fragility of the school-family alliance, and the rapid spread of artificial intelligence. These factors risk obscuring the importance of critical thinking, which is even more necessary today given rapid technological change, the new demands of inclusion, and the stratification of vulnerabilities. Consequently, there is a need to ground new competencies in a solid pedagogical reflexivity. For these reasons, in the last two editions of UNIMC's Specialization Course for Support Teachers, the Indirect Traineeship program has promoted the development of skills essential to the introduction of any innovation: observational skills, emotional self-regulation, and a sense of self-efficacy. Based on a metareflexive and co-constructivist approach, the program comprised alternating phases: planning; the implementation of activities and reflective tools tailored to internship settings; feedback; and critical discussion. This paper aims to examine in depth the methodological process of such programs, which are characterized by the central role of training in critical thinking. This skill is especially important in light of technological innovations in education, whose transformative impact on learning and socialization processes depends—as has often been the case throughout the history of pedagogy—on the ability to use them critically.