‘Ma è sempre stato così?’ Comunicare il patrimonio attraverso lo sguardo dei bambini

The Teacher Professional Development Research carried out in Cornaredo (MI), held within the Erasmus+ STEP project (Pedagogy of Citizenship and Teacher Training: an alliance between school and territory), involved a 3rd year Primary School class and the Museum of Rural Civilization of Cascina Favaglie. The aim of the project was to lead the children, with the inquiry-based learning methodology, to the reconstruction of the past of their territory in order to understand the value and the meaning of the heritage preserved in the museum. The teachers worked in team with the researchers and a student teacher, discussing the design and reflecting on their practices and on children's learning in monthly meetings throughout the project. The research methodology involved the use of qualitative tools such as focus groups, interviews, teacher diaries, observations and video observations in the classroom, transcriptions of conversations with children and children's works. The first visit on the territory was organized at the Museum of Rural Civilization where the volunteers of Italia Nostra illustrated the original use of the spaces now occupied by 114 the museum, a former pigsty, and explained the functions of the various objects on display. The teacher took up in the classroom the themes dealt with during the museum visit, inviting the children to reflect on the comparison with their everyday objects. And from this pour forth an inter-generational confrontation that involved also the families and led the children to dialogue with their grandparents, to listen to their stories, to share their objects, photographs and diaries with their classmates, all of which were incorporated into the setting up of a small museum in the classroom. A visit was then organized to the “Corti” (ancient farmhouses), now partly restored and inhabited, during which the children, divided into small groups, were given the task of collecting evidence of how people lived in those places in the past. In the teams the kids played the part of journalists, who interviewed witnesses, photographers and artists who immortalized the views and details they considered most significant, and special correspondents who collected curiosities and anecdotes. The project was developed throughout the whole school year, switching between activities in the classroom, in the museum and in the territory. Once all the material had been collected, it was the children themselves who felt the need to communicate and share with the community what they had learnt and therefore proposed the researchers and teachers to organize an exhibition at school, with photographs and texts elaborated by themselves to tell the story of Cornaredo's past. The designing of the exhibition offered them the opportunity to take an active and responsible role in preserving and promoting the heritage, developing a critical thinking towards the understanding of the relationship between past and present, nature and culture and shaping their own personal citizen identity in the awareness of being part of a collective history.