Becoming Academy
Becoming Academy is our continuing professional development centre, reserved exclusively for educators and teachers at Becoming schools.
It is a physical and digital space for training, research, discussion and exchange, designed to enable professionals at our schools to continue developing their skills and methodologies throughout their careers.
For us, training is not a one-off event, but an ongoing process: it stems from the needs of schools, links research with educational practice, and enables knowledge and experience to be shared within the network.
A physical and digital academy
Training programmes take various forms. Some involve the entire network, whilst others arise from the needs of an individual school or a group of schools and are delivered directly on site.
Meetings with educationalists, researchers and experts provide an opportunity to explore innovative methodologies, educational and teaching topics, and tools that are useful in day-to-day work.
Many of the presentations are recorded and made available via the Academy’s digital platform, enabling even those who did not attend in person to access the content, and over time becoming a resource for all professionals in the network.
The platform also brings together resources and learning pathways organised by theme, skill set and school year, which can be used for both individual learning and within working groups.
Learning from one another
Training is not just about experts and course content. An important part of the Becoming Academy stems from the exchange of ideas between professionals at our schools.
Meetings, working groups, exchanges of experiences and visits between schools in the network enable educators and teachers to observe different practices, share questions and solutions, and circulate experiences and skills.
What begins in one school can thus become a learning opportunity for others. Our Academy helps to build a shared professional culture without losing the richness of the experiences and identities of individual schools.
Education that begins in schools
We design the Becoming Academy’s programmes, taking into account different age groups, school years and the needs that arise from the teams’ day-to-day work.
Over the years, the training programme has explored, amongst other things, topics relating to the relationship between emotions and learning, group management and social dynamics, learning processes, and educational and teaching methodologies.
The aim is not merely to update skills, but to support educators and teachers in continuing to observe, question and develop their own way of working.
Contributions and collaborations
Our educational programme is enriched through collaboration with universities, research centres and professionals who bring diverse perspectives and expertise to our schools.
Over the years, we have explored, amongst other things, the relationship between emotions and learning through ‘warm cognition’, in collaboration with Mind4Children, a spin-off from the University of Padua founded by Daniela Lucangeli; conflict management through the Litigare Bene method developed by Daniele Novara’s CPP; and bilingualism and multilingualism through our collaboration with Bilingualism Matters, an international network dedicated to research and the dissemination of knowledge in this field.
Meetings and contributions become part of the Academy’s resources and are often recorded and made available to professionals within the network, so that training can continue to circulate amongst the schools.
Join the Becoming Education network
Through the Becoming Academy, we also support new educators and teachers as they join our schools.
Through onboarding programmes, new staff gradually become familiar with Becoming Education’s educational vision, its shared pedagogical and methodological principles, and the way in which these are put into practice across different age groups and in different schools.
Training thus helps to establish common points of reference within the network and, at the same time, to ensure that the educational project remains open to research, discussion and development.