‘Work’/‘World of Work’ and Primary Teacher Training

Abstract

‘Work’, as general concept, has been defined the activity that fully involves the human faculties. The work is however considered a specific form of human experience and is assumed as a founding aspect for teachers and learners. For this reason, work has often been a specific focus into the training curricula for new generations, since primary school. After recalling some old and new perspectives about the ‘work’ and the ‘world of work’, as training interventions within the primary school curriculum, the contribution focuses attention on how these must be able to become topics of primary teachers’ training. The method and the results of the first phase of analysis of a SoTL investigation, conducted within the Didactic course at the bachelor’s degree in Primary Education at the University of Bergamo, are presented. The investigation aimed to know the future teachers’ representations of ‘work’ and ‘world of work’, as concepts, in general, and as themes to be integrated into the school curriculum. The analysis highlighted the ability of student teachers to choose activities suited to the characteristics of the hypothetical pupils but also the difficulty of translating these themes into curriculum learning objectives.