Knowing how to argue and being able to understand argumentation (and thus being able to assess whether a statement, opinion or demonstration is sound and supportable) is necessary for many daily life activities, but is particularly essential for a successful university career. It is also for this reason that the Italian school curriculum attributes great importance to the development of these skills in all school cycles, starting from preschool through to secondary school. In spite of this importance, various data on university students’ (in)abilities highlight that at the end of secondary school many students have difficulties in producing and understanding argumentative texts, which impacts negatively on their academic success.

Argumentation abilities are doubly important for students in Scienze della Formazione Primaria (Primary Education Sciences, SFP) because, as they study to become preschool and primary school teachers, they need these abilities not only to proceed successfully in their academic career, but also to be able to foster the development of these skills in their pupils.

For this reason in the Dipartimento di Educazione e Scienze Umane (Department of Education and Human Sciences, DESU) of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia we have decided to tackle the issue of argumentation abilities with the perspective to elaborate activities and teaching strategies aimed, on the one side, at supporting the development of argumentative skills in SFP students and, on the other side, at providing tools for the development of argumentative processes in their future pupils from the early years of schooling.

With a transdisciplinary approach combining the perspectives of linguistics and mathematics education and involving different actors ensuring a plurality of viewpoints (in addition to researchers in linguistics, mathematics education and teaching methodologies, also preschool and primary school teachers, traineeship supervisors and SFP undergraduates), we have begun to collect and analyse various data on argumentative processes and abilities.

In the paper that we are proposing for the panel we intend to present and discuss the data collected in the last two academic years in the framework of tutoring support and remedial activities organised for first-year students with further additional requirements (OFAs). The activities on argumentative abilities have concerned argumentation in general as well as in specific mathematical contexts. They have been part of a wider range of activities concerning the areas that have emerged as more problematic for these students, namely text comprehension and basic grammar knowledge (50 hours), arithmetics and basic algebraic notions (50 hours).

With our presentation and analysis of difficulties emerged, activities proposed, results obtained and participants’ opinions, we aim to contribute to the discussion on educational poverty and on possible strategies to reduce school (and university) dropout, guarantee academic success for a larger number of students, and improve preservice teacher training.

Our contribution aims to present the results of a qualitative survey carried out with teachers that were trained on an experimental initial training program realized at Créteil’s department in France (Netter, 2022). The experimental teachers’ training seek to integrate aspects of a professional initial training that are usually perceived as fragmented: classroom observations, design and implementation of classroom sessions called "professional workshops", and training contents based on educational research (such as mutual analysis of students’ activity and teaching practices, or the distinction between learning processes and activity production). These training contents were specifically oriented in response to the children learning difficulties, that affect particularly pupils from the working-class backgrounds in France and in the Créteil department.

In this contribution, we rely on an analysis of 14 classroom observations and 17 interviews with former students from this experimental teacher training program who have been teaching from one to four years. We attempt to build a genealogy of practices to reveal the effects of training that we try to relate to the students’ learnings.

What do these primary school teachers have to say about their concerns? What are the contributions of the training program to their professionalization? Which discrepancies and continuities are observed between teachers practices and their discourse over their practices?

We seek to highlight the construction processes of a reflexive posture, and the role of the training program on these processes.

The large majority of respondents of this research underline the role of the professional pairs to build their practices and to overcome professional challenges. The attention of the respondents focus on the analysis of the students’ activity, with the often-stated ambition to succeed on teaching every child.

We analyzed the discourses of these teachers on objects that are usually covered by training programs, such as the "meaning of learning" or "pedagogical differentiation". The analysis shows that they mobilize a personal argumentative discourse, instead of the injunctive and impersonal discourses (“we must”) that often characterize the new teachers (Daguzon, 2009; Benveniste, 2023). These teachers do not necessarily credit the construction of their practices and professional reflection to their initial training. The « field » is often put forward as the main formative situation. However, it seems that the experimental integrated training program in which they participated allowed them to construct a well-equipped perspective on the “field”; particularly through the guided observations and “professional workshops” that these teachers experienced. Contrary to the paths often founded among beginners (Broccolichi et al., 2018), most of these teachers keep looking for ways to make all students learn and succeed, including those children who are socially distanced from school.

In Italy, dropout rates are still too high, with large territorial disparities at the expense of southern regions and suburbs. It is a complex phenomenon caused by the accumulation of factors external and internal to the educational system, leading to the deterioration of the bond between young people, school and society (De Witte et al., 2013).

The third sector implements numerous educational projects to counter school dropout, within a restorative and compensatory framework (Brighenti, 2009). The Association Maestri di Strada (MdS) is a non-profit organization that has long implemented complex interventions to counter school dropout and promote the social inclusion of young people. MdS began its work in Naples in the 1990s with the Chance Project, a second-chance school eventually rejected by the formal system (Melazzini, 2011; Adamo & Valerio, 2023). In 2010, it launched the E-vai Project, an unprecedented model of integrated educational experimentation based on the co-design and collaboration of the third sector, schools, agencies and territorial entities: its mission is to "modify a pedagogical culture that continues to produce special projects and didactics without questioning the regulatory paradigms of school and educational work" (Moreno, 2021, p. 18). In other words, MdS aspires to build intervention models that can be applied by teachers within schools from a preventive and ordinary perspective (Moreno, Parrello & Iorio, 2014; Parrello, 2018; Parrello, 2023). For this reason, MdS also aims to carry out continuous training of educators and teachers, centred on cooperation, creativity, active research, contact with the territory and, above all, reflective questioning of educational practice (Mortari, 2003; Parrello et al., 2020). In Italy, teacher training is still considered unsatisfactory, and reform efforts usually do not actively involve them (Gavosto, 2022).

In the 2022-23 school year, MdS began a Teachers-Participatory Action Research with a group of 18 external education professionals (10 teachers, 7 educators, and 1 psychologist), named Scuola Carla Melazzini, with the aim of engaging them and gathering their views on an appropriate training model to combat school dropout (Parrello et al, 2019).

The research went through phases of Planning, Action (documented through observation), Evaluation (documented through participants' narrative reports) and Reflection (focus groups).

In this study we present the results of the analysis of the observation reports and the final reports.

From the first Corpus - subjected to Thematic Analysis of Elementary Contexts (T-Lab) - 6 clusters emerged: Transforming Experiences; From Disorientation to Tolerance; Space and Time of Training; Contact, Welcoming, Resonance; Finding Meanings and Sharing Emotions; Narration and Reflection.

From the second corpus - subjected to Categorical Content Analysis - 8 macro-themes emerged: Arteducation; Reflexivity; The educator's posture; The power of metaphors; Rituals of the beginning and the end; Experiences of meaning; Mistakes and fragility; Contexts and sustainable changes.

These findings were the subject of discussion during a final focus group and were used as the basis for the redesign of a training course considered important for teachers’ professional identity formation and for the critical acquisition of effective methodologies against school dropout.