Spaced learning and innovative teaching: school time, pedagogy of attention and learning awareness

Abstract

Abstract Currently, the ‘time’ variable has taken on the function of instructional and pedagogical innovation catalyst, after representing-over the years-a symbol of democratisation, learning opportunity and instruction quality, able to incorporate themes such as school dropout, personalisation and vocation into learning. Spaced Learning is a teaching methodology useful to quickly seize information in long-term memory based on a particular arrangement of the lesson time that comprises three input sessions and two intervals. Herein we refer to a teachers’ training initiative on Spaced Learning within the programme ‘DocentiInFormAzione’ in the EDOC@WORK3.0 Project in Apulia region in 2015. The training experience aimed at increasing teachers’ competencies in the Spaced Learning method implemented in a context of collaborative reflection and reciprocal enrichment. The intent of the article is to show how a process of rooting of the same culture of innovation, which opens to the discovery (or rediscovery) of effective teaching practices sustained by scientific evidences, can be successfully implemented and to understand how or whether this innovation- based on the particular organisation of instructional time-links learning awareness to learning outcomes.