The influence of training on teachers’ teaching strategies: study of a sample of secondary school teachers

In recent years we have witnessed the evolution of society which has affected not only the world of schools but also the teaching staff. Teachers are no longer required to simply transmit knowledge, but to have a style of teaching capable of stimulating students’ participation in learning through discovery, group work and use of technology. Initial and in-service training, therefore, not only become the basis for professional development, but are also fundamental practices as they allow the acquisition of didactic-pedagogical techniques and strategies necessary to train a reflective professional who knows how to relate to the heterogeneity of classes, with special educational needs and with the need for an inclusive school. Nowadays, professional updating is foundamental to acquire relevant transversal skills to face daily educational challenges and it is considered as an openness to change and an interest in innovative aspects that should increase with the growth of knowledge acquired throughout life (Vieluf et al., 2012; OECD, 2019). Starting from these assumptions, this paper analyzes the results obtained thanks to the implementation of a field research conducted by DPSS at Sapienza University of Rome which involved 701 lower secondary and high school teachers. Through a self-administered questionnaire with five-point Likert scale the objective was to evaluate how often teachers use some teaching practices that were grouped into four strategies: consolidation, work on strategies, transfer of meanings and active construction of meanings (Cesareni, Rossi, 2013). The first results show on one hand the relationship between some aspects concerning the ongoing training received by teachers and the teaching strategies, on the other hand the correlation between the interest in innovation, the predisposition to change and the amount of training hours received in the year preceding the administration of the questionnaire. In an increasingly complex and diversified society where educational institutions are required to provide the tools to be able to understand the present and future reality and to help train the proactive citizens of tomorrow, the relevance of this contribution is to stimulate reflection on importance of teacher training, as it can influence teaching practices which in turn affect the quality of education and students’ school performance (Helms-Lorenz et al., 2013; Baldacci et al., 2020).