Pratiche di formative assessment per promuovere abilita di comprensione dei testi. Una sperimentazione in una scuola secondaria di primo grado

I dati delle indagini sugli apprendimenti degli studenti in Italia rivelano l’esistenza di fragilità nell’acquisizione di competenze essenziali e di differenze tra i risultati conseguiti. Per innovare la didattica al fine di adeguarla ai bisogni degli studenti, gli esperti di Docimologia caldeggiano l’uso di pratiche di valutazione formativa, o formative assessment (FA). In ambito internazionale diversi studi hanno mostrato l'efficacia di tali prassi, mentre in Italia non esistono ricerche sperimentali finalizzate a studiarne l’impatto sugli apprendimenti. Il progetto è entrato all’interno di quest’ambito di studi per controllare l’efficacia di un insieme di pratiche di FA sull'incremento delle abilità di comprensione dei testi degli studenti. Lo scopo è stato perseguito realizzando una sperimentazione in una scuola secondaria di primo grado che ha coinvolto gli studenti di due classi prime, i quali sono stati suddivisi a metà attraverso tecniche di randomizzazione per formare i due gruppi, sperimentale e di controllo. Dopo aver effettuato una rilevazione iniziale delle abilità di comprensione dei testi degli studenti (pre-test), è stato realizzato con quelli del gruppo sperimentale un intervento composto da 15 incontri di FA della durata di due ore ciascuno. Alla fine, sono state effettuate due rilevazioni finali (post-test) utilizzando sia la stessa prova utilizzata come pre-test sia una prova parallela. È stata calcolata la differenza post-test-pre-test per ogni gruppo ed è stato verificato quanto avesse influito la partecipazione all’intervento sperimentale su tale differenza tramite test non parametrici. I risultati hanno mostrato un incremento di abilità lievemente maggiore nel gruppo sperimentale, se confrontato con quello del gruppo di controllo, anche se questa differenza tra i due gruppi non è statisticamente significativa. Sebbene le analisi non abbiano consentito di rifiutare l’ipotesi nulla, la rilevanza di tale progetto risiede nel tentativo di aprire il dibattito sull’efficacia di prassi di FA sugli apprendimenti degli studenti in Italia.

Per un museo virtuale dell'informatica. Un supporto automatico per creare "visite museali"

The subject of the present research is related to the field of computer technology applied to support intellectual activities such as text translation, screenwriting and content organization of popular and education courses, especially concerning museum visits. The research has started with the deep analysis of the cognitive process which characterizes a screenwriter while working. This choice has been made because a screenplay is not only an aid to the realization of a show but, more in general, it can be considered as the planning of an education, popular and formative intellectual activity. After this analysis, the research has focused on the specific area of the planning, description and introduction of topics related to the history of science, and in particular, of computer science. To focus on this area it has been fundamental to analyse subjects concerning the didactics of museum visits organization. The aim was to find out the guide lines that a teacher should follow when planning the visit of a museum (virtual museum of the history of computer science). The consequent designing and realisation of an automatic support system for the description and the production of a formative, education and popular multimedia product (for the history of computer science), has been possible thanks to the results achieved through this research. The system obtained is provided by the following features: ·management of multimedia slides (such as texts, video, audio or images) which can be classified on the bases of the topic and of the profile of the user; ·automatic creation of a sequence of multimedia slides which introduce the topic; ·management of the interaction with the user to check and give validity to the product. The most innovative aspect of the present research is represented by the fact that the product is realised on the bases of the profile of the user.

Rafael Moneo: la complessità del vuoto. Dalle matrici formali dell'opera di Oteiza e Chillida

The experience of void, essential to the production of forms and to make use them, can be considered as the base of the activities that attend to the formative processes. If void and matter constitutes the basic substances of architecture. Their role in the definition of form, the symbolic value and the constructive methods of it defines the quality of the space. This job inquires the character of space in the architecture of Moneo interpreting the meaning of the void in the Basque culture through the reading of the form matrices in the work of Jorge Oteiza and Eduardo Chillida. In the tie with the Basque culture a reading key is characterized by concurring to put in relation some of the theoretical principles expressed by Moneo on the relationship between place and time, in an unique and specific vision of the space. In the analysis of the process that determines the genesis of the architecture of Moneo emerges a trajectory whose direction is constructed on two pivos: on the one hand architecture like instrument of appropriation of the place, gushed from an acquaintance process who leans itself to the reading of the relations that define the place and of the resonances through which measuring it, on the other hand the architecture whose character is able to represent and to extend the time in which he is conceived, through the autonomy that is conferred to them from values. Following the trace characterized from this hypothesis, that is supported on the theories elaborated from Moneo, surveying deepens the reading of the principles that construct the sculptural work of Oteiza and Chillida, features from a search around the topic of the void and to its expression through the form. It is instrumental to the definition of a specific area that concurs to interpret the character of the space subtended to a vision of the place and the time, affine to the sensibility of Moneo and in some way not stranger to its cultural formation. The years of the academic formation, during which Moneo enters in contact with the Basque artistic culture, seem to be an important period in the birth of that knowledge that will leads him to the formulation of theories tied to the relationship between time, place and architecture. The values expressed through the experimental work of Oteiza and Chillida during years '50 are valid bases to the understanding of such relationships. In tracing a profile of the figures of Oteiza and Chillida, without the pretension that it is exhaustive for the reading of the complex historical period in which they are placed, but with the needs to put the work in a context, I want to be evidenced the important role carried out from the two artists from the Basque cultural area within which Moneo moves its first steps. The tie that approaches Moneo to the Basque culture following the personal trajectory of the formative experience interlaces to that one of important figures of the art and the Spanish architecture. One of the more meaningful relationships is born just during the years of his academic formation, from 1958 to the 1961, when he works like student in the professional office of the architect Francisco Sáenz de Oiza, who was teaching architectural design at the ETSAM. In these years many figures of Basque artists alternated at the professional office of Oiza that enjoys the important support of the manufacturer and maecenas Juan Huarte Beaumont, introduced to he from Oteiza. The tie between Huarte and Oteiza is solid and continuous in the years and it realizes in a contribution to many of the initiatives that makes of Oteiza a forwarder of the Basque culture. In the four years of collaboration with Oiza, Moneo has the opportunity to keep in contact with an atmosphere permeated by a constant search in the field of the plastic art and with figures directly connected to such atmosphere. It’s of a period of great intensity as in the production like in the promotion of the Basque art. The collective “Blanco y Negro”, than is held in 1959 at the Galería Darro to Madrid, is only one of the many times of an exhibition of the work of Oteiza and Chillida. The end of the Fifties is a period of international acknowledgment for Chillida that for Oteiza. The decade of the Fifties consecrates the hypotheses of a mythical past of the Basque people through the spread of the studies carried out in the antecedent years. The archaeological discoveries that join to a context already rich of signs of the prehistoric era, consolidate the knowledge of a strong cultural identity. Oteiza, like Chillida and other contemporary artists, believe in a cosmogonist conception belonging to the Basques, connected to their matriarchal mythological past. The void in its meaning of absence, in the Basque culture, thus as in various archaic and oriental religions, is equivalent to the spiritual fullness as essential condition to the revealing of essence. Retracing the archaic origins of the Basque culture emerges the deep meaning that the void assumes as key element in the religious interpretation of the passage from the life to the death. The symbology becomes rich of meaningful characters who derive from the fact that it is a chthonic cult. A representation of earth like place in which divine manifest itself but also like connection between divine and human, and this manipulation of the matter of which the earth it is composed is the tangible projection of the continuous search of the man towards God. The search of equilibrium between empty and full, that characterizes also the development of the form in architecture, in the Basque culture assumes therefore a peculiar value that returns like constant in great part of the plastic expressions, than in this context seem to be privileged regarding the other expressive forms. Oteiza and Chillida develop two original points of view in the representation of the void through the form. Both use of rigorous systems of rules sensitive to the physics principles and the characters of the matter. The last aim of the Oteiza’s construction is the void like limit of the knowledge, like border between known and unknown. It doesn’t means to reduce the sculptural object to an only allusive dimension because the void as physical and spiritual power is an active void, that possesses that value able to reveal the being through the trace of un-being. The void in its transcendental manifestation acts at the same time from universal and from particular, like in the atomic structure of the matter, in which on one side it constitutes the inner structure of every atom and on the other one it is necessary condition to the interaction between all the atoms. The void can be seen therefore as the action field that concurs the relations between the forms but is also the necessary condition to the same existence of the form. In the construction of Chillida the void represents that counterpart structuring the matter, inborn in it, the element in absence of which wouldn’t be variations neither distinctive characters to define the phenomenal variety of the world. The physics laws become the subject of the sculptural representation, the void are the instrument that concurs to catch up the equilibrium. Chillida dedicate himself to experience the space through the senses, to perceive of the qualities, to tell the physics laws which forge the matter in the form and the form arranges the places. From the artistic experience of the two sculptors they can be transposed, to the architectonic work of Moneo, those matrices on which they have constructed their original lyric expressions, where the void is absolute protagonist. An ambit is defined thus within which the matrices form them drafts from the work of Oteiza and Chillida can be traced in the definition of the process of birth and construction of the architecture of Moneo, but also in the relation that the architecture establishes with the place and in the time. The void becomes instrument to read the space constructed in its relationships that determine the proportions, rhythms, and relations. In this way the void concurs to interpret the architectonic space and to read the value of it, the quality of the spaces constructing it. This because it’s like an instrument of the composition, whose role is to maintain to the separation between the elements putting in evidence the field of relations. The void is that instrument that serves to characterize the elements that are with in the composition, related between each other, but distinguished. The meaning of the void therefore pushes the interpretation of the architectonic composition on the game of the relations between the elements that, independent and distinguished, strengthen themselves in their identity. On the one hand if void, as measurable reality, concurs all the dimensional changes quantifying the relationships between the parts, on the other hand its dialectic connotation concurs to search the equilibrium that regulated such variations. Equilibrium that therefore does not represent an obtained state applying criteria setting up from arbitrary rules but that depends from the intimate nature of the matter and its embodiment in the form. The production of a form, or a formal system that can be finalized to the construction of a building, is indissolubly tied to the technique that is based on the acquaintance of the formal vocation of the matter, and what it also can representing, meaning, expresses itself in characterizing the site. For Moneo, in fact, the space defined from the architecture is above all a site, because the essence of the site is based on the construction. When Moneo speaks about “birth of the idea of plan” like essential moment in the construction process of the architecture, it refers to a process whose complexity cannot be born other than from a deepened acquaintance of the site that leads to the comprehension of its specificity. Specificity arise from the infinite sum of relations, than for Moneo is the story of the oneness of a site, of its history, of the cultural identity and of the dimensional characters that that they are tied to it beyond that to the physical characteristics of the site. This vision is leaned to a solid made physical structure of perceptions, of distances, guideline and references that then make that the process is first of all acquaintance, appropriation. Appropriation that however does not happen for directed consequence because does not exist a relationship of cause and effect between place and architecture, thus as an univocal and exclusive way does not exist to arrive to a representation of an idea. An approach that, through the construction of the place where the architecture acquires its being, searches an expression of its sense of the truth. The proposal of a distinction for areas like space, matter, spirit and time, answering to the issues that scan the topics of the planning search of Moneo, concurs a more immediate reading of the systems subtended to the composition principles, through which is related the recurrent architectonic elements in its planning dictionary. From the dialectic between the opposites that is expressed in the duality of the form, through the definition of a complex element that can mediate between inside and outside as a real system of exchange, Moneo experiences the form development of the building deepening the relations that the volume establishes in the site. From time to time the invention of a system used to answer to the needs of the program and to resolve the dual character of the construction in an only gesture, involves a deep acquaintance of the professional practice. The technical aspect is the essential support to which the construction of the system is indissolubly tied. What therefore arouses interest is the search of the criteria and the way to construct that can reveal essential aspects of the being of the things. The constructive process demands, in fact, the acquaintance of the formative properties of the matter. Property from which the reflections gush on the relations that can be born around the architecture through the resonance produced from the forms. The void, in fact, through the form is in a position to constructing the site establishing a reciprocity relation. A reciprocity that is determined in the game between empty and full and of the forms between each other, regarding around, but also with regard to the subjective experience. The construction of a background used to amplify what is arranged on it and to clearly show the relations between the parts and at the same time able to tie itself with around opening the space of the vision, is a system that in the architecture of Moneo has one of its more effective applications in the use of the platform used like architectonic element. The spiritual force of this architectonic gesture is in the ability to define a place whose projecting intention is perceived and shared with who experience and has lived like some instrument to contact the cosmic forces, in a delicate process that lead to the equilibrium with them, but in completely physical way. The principles subtended to the construction of the form taken from the study of the void and the relations that it concurs, lead to express human values in the construction of the site. The validity of these principles however is tested from the time. The time is what Moneo considers as filter that every architecture is subordinate to and the survival of architecture, or any of its formal characters, reveals them the validity of the principles that have determined it. It manifests thus, in the tie between the spatial and spiritual dimension, between the material and the worldly dimension, the state of necessity that leads, in the construction of the architecture, to establish a contact with the forces of the universe and the intimate world, through a process that translate that necessity in elaboration of a formal system.

E-learning e società della conoscenza

La tesi affronta le problematiche relative ai nuovi scenari educativi nella cosiddetta Società della Conoscenza e alle sfide che essa richiede alla didattica nei nuovi “ambienti” formativi. Partendo dall’analisi della definizione della stessa come Società della Conoscenza si cerca di darne una lettura che ne metta in luce gli elementi principali che la caratterizzano aprendo alla riflessione sullo sguardo che essa dà al suo futuro e agli scenari verso i quali si orientano le sue sfide cognitive ed educative. In tale analisi non può mancare una riflessione sul legame tra la società contemporanea e le cosiddette nuove tecnologie (ICT: Information and Comunication Technologies). Le ICT, infatti, in misura sempre maggiore, hanno invaso la società e influenzato l’evoluzione della stessa assumendo un ruolo significativo nella vita quotidiana e nell’affermarsi della società della conoscenza. Il percorso di ricerca prende il via da questi interrogativi per ampliare la riflessione sulle nuove frontiere dell’educazione nella società della conoscenza. Quest’ultima, infatti, così come si caratterizza e come si evolve, identificando la sua priorità non solo nella diffusione dell’informazione, ma anche e soprattutto nella “costruzione” di conoscenza, impone un nuovo modo di pensare e approcciarsi all’educazione e alla formazione. Il longlife learning diventa l’elemento centrale ma non va inteso solo come possibilità date all’individuo adulto di riprendere percorsi formativi lasciati o intraprenderne di nuovi. Quello che cambia è la finalità stessa della formazione: è il concetto dell’apprendimento come potenzialità individuale (empowerment). Non basta avere accesso e acquisire un numero sempre maggiore di informazioni ma occorre sviluppare la capacità di acquisire strategicamente le informazioni per essere capaci di affrontare i continui cambiamenti e costruire nuove forme di sapere condiviso. Sul piano operativo le ICT permettono numerose nuove possibilità per la formazione, sia come strumenti a supporto della didattica, sia come mezzi di trasmissione delle informazioni e costruzione di conoscenza. L’e-learning si afferma con una sua impostazione e una sua metodologia, nonché con i suoi “oggetti” e i suoi “ambienti”. Nella tesi vengono illustrate le principali problematiche da considerare per la costruzione di percorsi formativi in rete (strumenti, contenuti, ruoli, comunicazione, valutazione) per presentare, infine, i materiali prodotti dall’autrice per l’erogazione on line di moduli didattici in due Unità Formative.

La professione docente tra rappresentazioni e progetto formativo. Un'analisi pedagogica della competenza degli insegnanti secondari

This thesis deals with the professional characteristics of secondary school teachers, with particular regard to their competence and their education. The topic will be approached starting from the characteristics and trasnformations social research has identified concerning Italian teachers, focusing on secondary teacher training. After a brief look at Europe, the attention will be directed to Italy, with particular regard to the Postgraduate Schools of Specialisation for Secondary School Teachers (SSIS); hence the need for an analysis that focuses on teaching per se and its concrete pratice. For its nature to be fully grasped, teaching must be reconsidered as an independent object of study, a performance in which competence manifests itself and a form of action involving a set of tacit and personal knowledge. A further perspective opens up for analysis, according to which the professional characteristics of teachers are the result of an education in which the whole history of the subject is involved, in its educative, formative, professional and personal aspects. The teaching profession is imbued with implicit meanings which are inaccessible to conscience but orient action and affect the interpretation of experience. Through the analysis of three different empirical data sets, collected among teachers-in-training and teachers qualified at SSIS, I will try to investigate the actual existence, the nature and the features of such implicit knowledge. It appears necessary to put the claims of process-product approaches back in their right perspective, to the benefit of a holistic conception of teaching competence. The teacher is, at the same time, “he who is teaching” and offers a concrete receiver the fruit of an endless work of study, reflection, practice and self-update. To understand this process will mean to penetrate more and more deeply into the core of teaching and teaching competence , a competence that in some respects “is” always “that” teacher, with his or her own story, implicit knowledge and representations.

Educazione alla cittadinanza per cittadini immigrati adulti. Il contributo della formazione linguistico-giuridica all'acquisizione di competenze di cittadinanza in lingua seconda

The research examines which cultural and linguistic instruments can be offered to provide adult migrants with formative access to citizenship competences. Starting from the questions: How can individuals of all community groups present in a nation-state acquire high standards of linguistic, sociolinguistic and discourse competences in order to be fully integrated, that is to participate and be included in social activities in the public domain such as work and institutional environments? How are these competencies developed in an educational context? How do adult migrants behave linguistically in this context, according to their needs and motivations? The research hypothesis aimed at outlining a formative project of citizenship education targeted at adult foreign citizens, where a central role is assigned both to law education and linguistic education. Acoordingly, as the study considered if the introduction of a law programme in a second language course could be conceived as an opportunity to further the access to active citizenship and social participation, a corpus of audiodata was collected in law classes of an Italian adult professional course attended by a 50% of foreign students. The observation was conducted on teacher and learner talk and learner participation in classroom interaction when curriculum legal topics were introduced and discussed. In the classroom law discourse two dimensions were analyzed: the legal knowledge construction and the participants’ interpersonal and identity construction. From the analysis, the understanding is that drawn that law classes seem to represent an educational setting where foreign citizens have an opportunity to learn and practise citizenship. The social and pragmatic approach to legal contents plays a relevant role, in a subject which, in non-academic contexts, loses its technical specificity and refers to law as a product of social representation. In the observed educational environment, where students are adults who bring into the classroom multiple personal and social identities, legal topics have the advantage of increasing adult migrants’ motivation to ‘go back to school’ as they are likely to give hints, if not provide solutions, to problems relating to participation in socio-institutional activities. At the same time, these contents offer an ideal context where individuals can acquire high discourse competences and citizenship skills, such as agency and critical reflection. Besides, the analysis reveals that providing adult learners with materials that focus on rights, politics and the law, i.e. with materials which stimulate discussion on concerns affecting their daily lives, is welcomed by learners themselves, who might appreciate the integration of these same topics in a second language course.

1967-1987: l'altra civiltà del testo. Impulsi storici e scrittura nel teatro d'innovazione francese

Lo studio analizza le svolte nel teatro di innovazione francese prodotte dalla rivolta sociale e dalla sua rivoluzione culturale del 1968. La ricerca si è concentrata su tre livelli di analisi: un'analisi – storica, politica, sociale, culturale – dell'anno-tournant; un'analisi delle reazioni nel mondo del teatro contemporanee alla rivolta; un'analisi delle prassi spettacolari di lunga durata originate dall'evento. Sono stati, quindi, esaminati criticamente i testi cardine degli intellettuali ispiratori, protagonisti e interpreti della breccia culturale, per poi rintracciare i valori emersi all'interno del mondo dello spettacolo. La contestazione sociale ha agito sul mondo del teatro producendo delle ripercussioni immediate – l'occupazione dell'Odéon, la contestazione al XXII Festival d'Avignon, la produzione della Déclaration de Villeurbanne – e delle prassi di lunga durata che hanno agito sui processi formativi e creativi delle compagnie francesi che, dalla fine degli anni Sessanta, hanno prodotto creazioni collettive (in particolare il Théâtre du Soleil e il Théâtre de l'Aquarium, ma anche la Nouvelle Compagnie d'Avignon, il Grand Magic Circus e il Théâtre Populaire di Lorraine) e sul corpus drammaturgico e teorico di Michel Vinaver. Sono state, quindi, analizzate le relazioni che si sono instaurate tra i protagonisti appena nominati e i differenziati contesti, sociali e teatrali, facendo emergere nuove istanze creative. Tali istanze hanno saputo rispondere alle spinte etiche ed estetiche del momento storico, le hanno declinate sul piano delle prassi teatrali e rilanciate verso modalità nuove che hanno favorito l'emersione di una nuova civiltà del testuale.

Media activism on and off line by Italian adolescents and young adults

From several researchers it appears that Italian adolescents and young people are grown up with commercial television which is accused to contain too much violence, sex, reality shows, advertising, cartoons which are watched from 1 to 4 hours daily. Adolescents are also great users of mobile phones and spend a lot of time to use it. Their academic results are below the average of Ocse States. However the widespread use of communication technology and social networks display also another side of adolescents who engage in media activism and political movement such as Ammazzateci tutti!, Indymedia, Movimento 5 Stelle, Movimento No Tav. In which way does the world economic crisis -with the specific problems of Italy as the cutting founds for school, academic research and welfare, the corruption of political class, mafia and camorra organisation induce a reaction in our adolescents and young people? Several researches inform us about their use of internet in terms of spending time but, more important, how internet, and the web 2.0, could be an instrument for their reaction? What do they do online? How they do it? Which is the meaning of their presence online? And, has their online activity a continuity offline? The research aims are: 1. Trough a participant observation of Social Network profiles opened by 10 young active citizens, I would seek to understand which kind of social or political activities they engage in online as individuals and which is the meaning of their presence online. 2. To observe and understand if adolescents and young people have a continuity of their socio-political engagement online in offline activities and which kind of experiences it is. 3. Try to comprehend which was (or which were) the significant, learning experiences that convinced them about the potential of the web as tool for their activism.

Gesù continuatore di Giovanni. Studio storico-esegetico sulla relazione tra Gesù di Nazaret e Giovanni il Battista

L’enigma della relazione tra Gesù e Giovanni il Battista ha da sempre stimolato l’immaginazione storica degli studiosi, suscitando una varietà di ipotesi e valutazioni, spesso assai diverse. Ciò nonostante, tutti concordano su un punto: che, almeno nella sua fase maggiore in Galilea, il ministero di Gesù fosse una realtà essenzialmente autonoma, diversa, originale e irriducibile rispetto alla missione di Giovanni. In controtendenza con questa “impostazione predefinita”, il presente studio sostiene la tesi secondo cui Gesù portò avanti la sua missione come intenzionale e programmatica prosecuzione dell’opera prematuramente interrotta di Giovanni. Nella prima parte, si esamina approfonditamente quale memoria della relazione sia conservata nelle fonti più antiche, cioè Q (qui analizzata con particolare attenzione) e Marco – a cui si aggiunge Matteo, che, in ragione dello stretto legame storico-sociologico con Q, offre un esempio illuminante di rinarrazione della memoria altamente originale eppure profondamente fedele. La conclusione è che la memoria più antica della relazione Gesù-Giovanni è profondamente segnata da aspetti di accordo, conformità e allineamento. Nella seconda parte si esaminano una serie di tradizioni che attestano che Gesù era percepito pubblicamente in relazione al Battista e che egli stesso condivideva e alimentava tale percezione riallacciandosi a lui in polemica con i suoi avversari, e dipingendolo come una figura di capitale importanza nella predicazione e nell’insegnamento a seguaci e discepoli. Infine, si argomenta l’esistenza di ampie e sostanziali aree di accordo tra i due a livello di escatologia, istruzioni etiche e programma sociale, missione penitenziale verso i peccatori e attività battesimale. L’ipotesi che Gesù portasse avanti l’attività riformatrice di Giovanni, in termini di una campagna purificatoria “penitenziale-battesimale-esorcistica” in preparazione dell’avvento di Dio, consente infine di armonizzare in modo soddisfacente i due aspetti più caratteristici dell’attività di Gesù (normalmente giustapposti, quando non contrapposti): escatologia e miracoli, il Gesù profeta e il Gesù taumaturgo.

Capacita' e formazione nel liberalismo di Amartya Sen e Martha Nussbaum. Eredita' differenti del pensiero politico per una "cittadinanza del mondo"

Il presente lavoro di ricerca si propone di discutere il contributo che l’analisi dell’evoluzione storica del pensiero politico occidentale e non occidentale riveste nel percorso intellettuale compiuto dai fondatori della teoria contemporanea dell’approccio delle capacità, fondata e sistematizzata nei suoi contorni speculativi a partire dagli anni Ottanta dal lavoro congiunto dell’economista indiano Amartya Sen e della filosofa dell’Università di Chicago Martha Nussbaum. Ci si ripropone di dare conto del radicamento filosofico-politico del lavoro intellettuale di Amartya Sen, le cui concezioni economico-politiche non hanno mai rinunciato ad una profonda sensibilità di carattere etico, così come dei principali filoni intorno ai quali si è imbastita la versione nussbaumiana dell’approccio delle capacità a partire dalla sua ascendenza filosofica classica in cui assume una particolare primazia il sistema etico-politico di Aristotele. Il pensiero politico moderno, osservato sotto il prisma della riflessione sulla filosofia della formazione che per Sen e Nussbaum rappresenta la “chiave di volta” per la fioritura delle altre capacità individuali, si organizzerà intorno a tre principali indirizzi teorici: l’emergenza dei diritti positivi e sociali, il dibattito sulla natura della consociazione nell’ambito della dottrina contrattualista e la stessa discussione sui caratteri delle politiche formative. La sensibilità che Sen e Nussbaum mostrano nei confronti dell’evoluzione del pensiero razionalista nel subcontinente che passa attraverso teorici antichi (Kautylia e Ashoka) e moderni (Gandhi e Tagore) segna il tentativo operato dai teorici dell’approccio delle capacità di contrastare concezioni politiche contemporanee fondate sul culturalismo e l’essenzialismo nell’interpretare lo sviluppo delle tradizioni culturali umane (tra esse il multiculturalismo, il comunitarismo, il neorealismo politico e la teoria dei c.d. “valori asiatici”) attraverso la presa di coscienza di un corredo valoriale incentrato intorno al ragionamento rintracciabile (ancorché in maniera sporadica e “parallela”) altresì nelle tradizioni culturali e politiche non occidentali.