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Chapter Two
Planning
69
>
The choice, made by teachers, after a preliminary analysis of the
initial situation, of the routes deemed most appropriate for fulil-
ling the general instructions of the planning;
>
The identiication by teachers of the objectives and their gradua-
tion;
>
The selection of content and the organisation of the environment
and learning experiences (times, spaces, how to group the pupils,
etc.);
>
The evaluation as an integral part of the education action, with
a regulatory function of the whole learning process, differentia-
ted into initial, formative and summative evaluation and different
from the veriication.
The objectives were diversiied into general and speciic and the dei-
nition of the objectives was presented in various ways by different
theorists. In this model taxonomic tables were used to achieve the
different teaching units, in which the various speciic objectives were
articulated.
Next to this linear model, in the early 1980s in Italy, especially thanks
to the research by Damiano, a new model spread concerning the
pro-curricular planning by concept maps, based on the psychologi-
cal theories of J. Bruner, D. Ausubel and structuralism. The teaching
centred on concepts was developed in the United States in the 1950s
to reform curricula, especially for scientiic subjects. According to
Bruner, basing the curricula on the structure of the disciplines, could
give the following advantages:
>
Being able to anticipate the learning of the fundamental concepts:
for any piece of knowledge there is an appropriate version accor-
ding to age;
>
Provide the tools to continue to learn, using the subjects as “
special
methods of thought applicable to speciic categories of phenomena
”;
>
Facilitate general transference in learning.
The research on the structure of the disciplines was further devel-
oped by J.J. Schwab.
Damiano
2
while organising the methodology of planning, identiied
three phases. The teachers, through an initial thorough conversation
with the group of students, identify the knowledge already held by
2
E. Damiano,
La religione cattolica a scuola
, La Scuola, Brescia, 1989.