Formare gli insegnanti alla discussione in classe: il Discussion Study

The article documents a research and training project carried out in Reggio Emilia between 2018 and 2020, which builds on the Lesson Study (LS) while presenting its further development and application to the didactic strategy of discussion. The "Discussion Study" (DS), a new tool for teacher education and training, is located at the intersection of two important lines of research. The first is concerned with classroom discussion, understood as a strategy for the co-construction of knowledge in collective discourse (Pontecovo et al., 1991; Bartolini Bussi et al., 1995), and with the teacher's action as a regulator of learning in a distinctly Vygotskian frame of reference. The second is the LS, an in-service training model of oriental origin that involves the joint planning of a lesson by a group of teachers, the delivery of the lesson in the presence of observers, and the re-planning by the same group. (Hall, 2013; Bartolini Bussi, Ramploud, 2018). The article explores the results obtained using a mixed research methodology (Robasto & Trinchero, 2019) to explain the effectiveness of DS in changing the teacher's conceptions and practises of classroom discussions.