Job shadowing in Pamplona

A school tailored to needs

Financing: 2025-1-IT02-KA121-SCH-000327350

A pedagogue, a nursery educator and three teachers from the school and educational services of the City of Bologna carried out an intense week of job shadowing in the region of Navarra (Spain), visiting the specialist advice center, kindergartens and kindergartens.

The group has analyzed how a different school system responds to the challenges of inclusion, multiculturalism and space management, deriving from it fundamental stimuli to reflect on its starting context.

One of the most interesting elements of international mobility was the study of CREENA (Resource Center for Special Education of Navarra). Unlike healthcare models, this structure operates from a purely educational perspective, providing schools with advice, aids and specialized personnel directly integrated into the teaching team.

The participants were able to observe a strong capillarity of expert figures in the field: the systematic presence of speech therapists (understood as educational figures), clinical pedagogists and support teachers guarantees an evolutionary potential aimed at all girls and boys, working mainly within the section; tools such as Alternative Augmentative Communication (CAA) through pictograms and the preparation of “decompression angles” for emotional regulation testify to a widespread attention to well-being and accessibility of environments.

The comparison between the different schools visited (from the bilingual realities of cosmopolitan neighborhoods to rural centers in the Basque language) highlighted different approaches with respect to spontaneous play and educational structure, often oriented to preparation for primary school. However, participants identified strengths in specific community practices:

• continuity and integration are promoted through projects in which girls and boys in primary school become “tutors” of the youngest and the youngest of childhood in the garden, taking care of relationships and the transmission of social rules;
• the effectiveness of the “less is more” principle. Minimal environments, furnishings reduced to a minimum, the exclusive use of natural materials and a strong connection with local producers translate sustainability into a practice of active and participatory citizenship.

The immersion in the Navarra system allowed the participants to activate an open and critical view of routines, the organization of rincones (centers of interest) and the management of school time.
The encounter with different practices does not offer ready-made solutions, but it stimulates 0-6 service personnel to question themselves, exploiting the strengths of the Italian model and accepting new organizational solutions to further qualify Bologna's educational services from an increasingly European perspective.

Services involved: Aquilone kindergarten, Andersen, De Stefani and Marighetto kindergartens