Giuseppina Pizzigoni and the experience of the “Rinnovata” School: an emblematic pedagogical figure in the Italian panorama of the early Twentieth Century

The aim of this contribution is to explore the emblematic figure of Giuseppina Pizzigoni, pedagogue and teacher, who worked in Italy at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. This pedagogist lived and worked as a teacher in a historical-cultural context characterised by the development of Positivism, a moment in which the need for greater scientific rigour in education was affirmed. The definition of the method and the object of study, the observation, the collection of data, the formulation of a hypothesis or a plan of action, as well as its application, and the verification of results, are at the basis of the scientific method. From this Pizzigoni derived the assumptions of her approach and method, starting from the diffusion, especially in America and Northern Europe, of the Pedagogical Activism and of the experiences of the New Schools, based on the centrality of the child, on the respect for his person and his integral development: physical, mental, affective and relational. This has made her approach highly topical and of great interest to researchers in recent years, especially because of what she says about the relationship between culture and nature in education. The “Fondo Pizzigoni” today constitutes a pedagogical heritage of enormous value and interest.