Teaching Italian Literature

The course aims to provide a comprehensive background of the teaching of Italian literature in the different grades and orders of secondary school. It will address the main issues related to the epistemological statute and the most important core themes of the discipline, with extensive analysis and discussion of emerging issues in teaching practice, in order to encourage the personal elaboration and the critical adoption of literature teaching methodology in accordance with the current scientific and epistemological debate. The course will focus not only on methodological theories, but also on the most widespread approaches to the Italian literature teaching. It also focuses on questions of interpretation related to direct work on texts provided in the literary canon suggested by ministerial policy documents (National indications and Guidelines). The course is aimed at consolidating the fundamental elements of interpretation and decoding of literary textuality, and allows to develop and evaluate effective teaching strategies with reference to the processes of educational multimedia communication, in the perspective of inclusive teaching.

Knowledge
The course aims to offer students an in-depth overview of the main teaching methodologies of Italian literature in order to encourage a critical approach to the methods and possibilities offered by existing teaching tools.
With respect to the fields of knowledge, the course will address the following content:
- history and epistemological foundations of the discipline;
- main teaching guidelines for the different secondary school grades and orders;
- teaching methods, techniques and tools;
- critical and comparative analysis of the most common historical and anthological literature textbooks used in the secondary school;
- teaching methods, tools and technologies to encourage inclusive learning for students with special educational needs, with specific learning disabilities and in situation of disability;
- importance of the text in the literature learning (relationship between text and language structures and between text and historical and social-cultural context);
- methods of knowledge survey and skill assessment.

Competences
With respect to the fields of the competences, students will reflect on the epistemological status of the discipline and will investigate the docimological issues affecting the assessment of disciplinary learning; they will be able to evaluate the problematic aspects of teaching practice and to design with autonomy and originality effective teaching strategies in relation to the changing and complex school context.
Moreover, students, having consolidated the possession of the fundamental elements of interpretation and decoding of literary textuality, will reach the personal elaboration and the conscious and critical adoption of a didactic method adequately supported by the scientific and epistemological point of view. So they will be able to build and evaluate effective teaching strategies also in reference to the processes of educational multimedia communication.