The contribution aims to describe how adequate teacher training and monitored experiments supported by various institutions make it possible for a school to effectively respond to the challenges of a changing student body and, at times, the risk of dropout. Over the years, IC Riccardo Massa in Milan has implemented numerous projects for the educational success of students facing difficulties and has experimented with innovative teaching and learning paths.

In this spirit of renewal, the institute initiated the introduction of the Montessori methodological approach in the lower secondary education in 2014, which became a ministerial experiment three years later. In 2021, at the institute's initiative, a national network was established, with this school as the leader.

Data and research from institutional bodies show that the experimentation has been effective over the years in improving academic results and countering both implicit and explicit dropout, which particularly affects students in the peripheral neighbourhoods of large cities like Milan.

Peripheral areas, affected by the phenomenon of WHITE FLIGHT, with significant elements of school segregation, have, thanks to the introduction of the Montessori method, not only retained the local student population but also become attractive to students from more central areas.

The inclusion of Montessori-oriented courses has thus enabled the activation of policies for de-segregation through diversified planning, laying the groundwork for change and increasingly inclusive innovation.

For the implementation of the experiment, a training program aimed at lower secondary school teachers was designed in collaboration with Opera Nazionale Montessori. This program provides a solid pedagogical and methodological preparation to structure the Montessori teaching-learning path with adolescent students.

This study recognizes the importance of supporting the professional capacity of teachers in terms of their ability to set up functional, innovative learning environments capable of reaching even the least advantaged students. It is known that the context of the secondary school, in particular of the first grade, is a 'weak' link in the school system, but at the same time a degree of schooling, crucial for school success, in which it is desirable to work in order to prevent early school leaving. The aim of this contribution is to describe an experience of didactic innovation co-designed with secondary school teachers, in order to stimulate the activation of the less motivated students and to enhance study skills and comprehension of written texts.

The specific objectives of this research are: a) to design and implement a methodology for the promotion of text comprehension and study skills, which can be applied to expository texts of various disciplines; b) to test the effectiveness of this specially designed teaching intervention for increasing text comprehension and study skills. The researchers co-developed an intervention model on the premise of detecting and discussing the needs reported by teachers and on the ground of prior experiences (Cardarello, Pintus, 2018).

The rationale of the intervention method was as follows: convergence in the identification of objectives to be improved in secondary school students; identification of an eclectic but sustainable methodology that could be applied to multiple subject contexts.

The experimental working method and teaching methodology involved collaborative work in pairs, as a derivation of the Reciprocal Teaching (RT) (Palincsar A.S., Brown, 1984, from the Italian version adapted from SapiE, called Reading Comprehension Reciprocal Teaching RC-RT (Calvani, Chiappetta Cajola, 2019). The intervention provided for the teacher's use of modeling and final feedback to evaluate the work in pairs, with the fostering of two classical strategies, questioning and summarizing, which were revisited and finalized to the exercise of producing written summaries applied to class textbooks or standard subject texts.

The experimentation aims to investigate the sustainability of the proposed methodology over time and monitor its effectiveness. A significant improvement in comprehension and summary production is hypothesized in terms of a more marked improvement for low proficiency students, and at the same time progress is expected for all students in terms of an active attitude towards academic texts and discourse. It is further intended to investigate to what extent the textual and disciplinary variables can lead to different outcomes through the exercise of different application of questioning.

The interpretation of pupils' educational needs and the promotion of everyone's educational success through appropriate pedagogical and didactic tools is a crucial aspect of professionalism of the teachers, as today they have to deal with particularly complex socio-educational contexts. In the progressive construction of professionalism, from initial teacher training to the different forms of in-service training, the evolution of the perception of self-efficacy is central (OECD, 2014) and particularly correlated with the well-being of students and their educational success (Skaalvik and Skaalvik, 2007). For these reasons, the degree course in Primary Education Sciences, through its internship courses, can offer useful training and accompanying opportunities, for both trainee-teachers and teachers in the educational institutions that welcome them. In particular, during the fourth and fifth year of the internship, the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia has set up joint training courses for students and teachers on different didactic and pedagogical areas, called 'internship projects', carried out under the scientific supervision of university lecturers in the schools of six provinces in northern Italy. Within the framework of these pathways, the main aim of the study here reported is to investigate how teachers and trainee-teachers perceive themselves in term of self-efficacy, with particular regard to some aspects of their professionalism linked to countering of the school drop-out rate, such as the ability to involve and motivate pupils and the differentiation of teaching strategies. Secondly, the training needs of students and in-service teachers are to be monitored over time in order to observe whether and how they change. In order to investigate teachers' representations, a questionnaire based on an Italian elaboration (Cardarello et al., 2016) of the Tsachennen-Moran scale, also known as the Ohio scale (TSES 2001), was used in the reduced 12-item version; teachers and students were also asked to represent themselves graphically in their work or training context; in the future, we intend to analyse teachers' professionalism also on the basis of the analysis of these representations. Approximately 800 anonymous questionnaires were collected (315 teachers, 461 trainees), which revealed age, educational qualification, teaching experience, and a self-assessment of teachers' and trainee-teachers' effectiveness with respect to three aspects: classroom management (control of classroom behaviour, setting and maintaining rules, handling difficult situations), engagement and motivation of pupils and families (motivation of pupils with low interest, motivation towards learning, encouragement towards school success, promotion of educational alliance with families) and ability to use different strategies to support children's understanding (ability to ask good questions, use different teaching and assessment strategies). Initial descriptive analyses showed a perception of medium to medium-low efficacy, not particularly differentiated according to the items. Moreover, the results highlighted a training need in assessment strategies for both teachers and trainee-teachers and a more positively perceived self-efficacy by teachers with more than 10 years of experience with respect to motivating pupils.