LESSICO PEDAGOGICO

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L'Orientamento. Orientare nella «società senza orientamento». La sfida difficile della pedagogia

The Guidance. Guiding in the «Society Without Guidance». The Difficult Challenge of Pedagogy

Daniela Dato

Dover dare una definizione completa ed esaustiva di orientamento non è impresa semplice. Perché anche l'orientamento sta attraversando un mo-mento di crisi. Ma per quanto difficile da definire e per quanto sottoposto a importati sfide epistemologiche e prassiche, esso si attesta, oggi più che mai, indiscutibile "bene sociale", "bene economico", dimensione ineludibile e necessaria per la costruzione di un welfare inclusivo, attivante e capacitante. Di fronte a tale scenario il pro-blema della pedagogia contemporanea, crediamo, non sia tanto educare alla crisi, educare cioè a "camminare sulle sabbie mobili" per usare una citazione di Bauman; obiettivo che da sempre essa si è posta. Crediamo piutto-sto che la vera sfida sia quella di muoversi nella crisi, di non perdere i propri punti di riferimento e di cercarne di nuovi nell'attraversare la crisi stessa: ovvero vera sfida è formare e orientare nella crisi, farsi "invischiare", "spor-care" dalla crisi e uscirne ridefinita, attualizzata. La risposta a cui pensiamo, dunque, è quella di una "peda-gogia dopo le pedagogie" che faccia proprio "un progetto audace che funga da orientatore e da traguardo" (Cam-bi, 2006, p. 26) e che guardi alla società postmoderna e alla sue contraddizioni non solo come perdita ma come opportunità. Una pedagogia che ri-orienti prima di tutto se stessa in termini di modelli, linguaggi, strumenti in un momento storico, ricorda sempre De Masi, in cui imper-versa "la mancanza di un modello interpetativo, anzi il vuoto oppressivo di un non-modello [che] ci rende iner-mi" (2014).

Giving a complete and exhaustive definition of guidance is not an easy task. Therefore, guidance is facing the crisis, too. But in spite of its difficult definition and the epistemological and praxis challenges it is faced with, guidance represents, today more than ever, an undeniable "social good", an "economic good", ineluctable dimension necessary to build an inclusive, activating and capabilited welfare. In front of this situation, we then believe that the problem of con-temporary pedagogy is not to learn to manage the crisis, which is "to walk in the quicksand" as Bauman says; a goal pedagogy has always set. We rather believe that the real challenge is to move across the crisis, without losing the point of references and trying to find new ones: the great challenge is thus to learn and guide in the crisis, "get involved" in it and "get dirty" of it but get out of it in an updated and redefined way. Therefore, the answer we think is that of "a pedagogy after the pedagogies" that adopts "a bold project which is at the same time a guide path and an arrival line" (Cambi, 2006, p. 26) and that looks at the postmodern society and its contradictions non only as a lost but also as an opportunity. A Pedagogy which first of all re-orients itself in terms of models, languages and means in an historical moment in which, De Masi recalls, "the lack of an interpretative model, indeed the interpretative emptiness of a non-model, [that] makes us defenceless" (2014).

Parole chiave: Orientamento, pedagogia, educazione Keywords: Guidance, Pedagogy, Education Articolo ricevuto: 1 gennaio 2015 Versione finale: 1marzo 2015

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A SOCIETY WITHOUT GUIDANCE?

Giving a complete and exhaustive definition of guidance is not an easy task. It would be much easier to describe the characteristics and features of the cri-

sis rather than to give a clear idea of guidance and of a choice, empowerment, capability based education in what De Masi has defined as the «society without guidance» (2014).

Even the tenacity and competence of an educator, a pedagogue, a trainer or a high quality teacher risk today to waver in front of what, in different ways and with a variety of metaphors and languages, has been defined as the age of liquidi-ty (Bauman), of risk (Beck), of disenchantment (Cambi), of the worrying guest (Galimberti), of instability (Dahrendorf), of uncertainty (Jaques).

Wavering is the conviction that talking about guidance still has a sense, and mostly, that the direction of «towards-where-to-guide» and «how-to-guide» are still clear.

In an age of displacement, lacks, fading-out (Annacontini, 2014), of the hy-pothesis of the End of the Story (Fukuyama, 2003), the risk of wavering interests even the most militant and determined Pedagogy that ought to be a tool of trans-formation and change from the praxis of crisis to the praxis and strategies of planning.

It is almost as if that exercise of engagement, planning and dissent couldn't get any air or any breath and planning till the implosion and self-referentiality, a «pedagogical presumption» which lacks of concreteness and operativity.

Especially nowadays that the idea of lifelong learning goes side by side with the idea of a lifelong and lifewide crisis and every place and age of life are crossed by doubt, uncertainty, displacement.

Childhood, robbed of its spaces and times of play and imagination, bombarded with new codes and languages; adolescence, confronted with a «future that just isn't what it used to be» and that has to search et re-invent means to build it and plan it; adulthood that, as Cataluccio (2004) claims, does not exist anymore and is forced to confront itself with a social, professional, family, cultural and economic complexity, which may be translated into a crisis of identity, risk of fragility and loss of reference points; old age that is a lost, forgotten, removed, nebulous and abstract age (Augé, 2014), etc. Realities that, evidently, put into question the idea of the future that «is synonym of growth […], to see it fogging and then disap-pearing […] hits the heart of the motivational system and creates a painful grief: together with the future die the hope, the authenticity and the pleasure of living to grow and become oneself» (Pietropolli Charmet, 2012).

In this sense, the labyrinth is properly considered as a metaphor of the pow-erful suggestions and constructive representations which characterise the crisis and its dynamics. The labyrinth is in fact an efficient image that is able to com-municate, on one hand, the idea of the daily experience of the individual marked

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by the insecuritas and continuous research of a possible understanding of the world, on the other, it is an image that is able to represent the natural need to manage the abnormal reality, enclosed in a maze. The labyrinth's idea corre-sponds to the risk for the individual to get lost and not to find the path where «there is no trace of the ancient and strong scenarios on which to write the plot of one's own existential path» (De Luigi, 2007, p.19)457, but it is also the meta-phor of the travel, of the «itinerary», as explained by Demetrio referring to the experience of self-guidance (Demetrio, 1991).

Today, more than ever before, the labyrinth becomes the symbol of a new subjectivity that has to face a society in which the rapidity of transformations leaks a sense of impermanence that «leads to think the variable and inconstancy as the rule» (Calaprice, 2004, p. 16), but that at the same time makes difficult for the individual to stand in the variability, «to remain in movement while being a malleable clay and a skilful sculptor» (Bauman, 2000, p.109).

In a society characterised by tensions and imbalance the individual shows the undeniable features of a hurt and restless identity, full of shadows (Cambi, 2006), who needs to learn how «to manage more and more coherently a know-how and a thought that have become disseminative and plural, flexible and entropic» (Cambi, 2006, p. 71).

In this sense, it is necessary to accept the challenge, learn to recognise the dif-ferent possibilities and decide among unsolvable questions, which often depend on unknown rules; it is also necessary to accept the challenge of researching and planning and let individual become ethically responsible of his or her actions in a world of innumerable alternatives with which to exchange meanings, emotions, experiences that are continuously evolving. A demanding project that reminds us that our life is a work of art and, in order to live it like that,

We must set ourselves challenges which are (at the moment of their setting, at any rate) difficult to confront point-blank; we must choose targets that are (at the moment of their choosing, at any rate) well beyond our reach, and standards of excellence that vexingly seem to stay stubbornly far above our ability (as already achieved, at any rate) to match whatever we do or may be doing. We need to at-tempt the impossible. And we can only hope, with no support from a trustworthy favourable prognosis (let alone from certainty), that with a long and grinding ef-fort we may sometime manage to match those standards and reach those targets and so rise to the challenge. Uncertainty is the natural habitat of human life – though the hope of escaping uncertainty is the engine of human life pursuits. Es-caping uncertainty is a paramount ingredient, even if only tacitly presumed, of all and any composites images of happiness. This is why «genuine, proper and com-

457 All translations in this article are the author's except where otherwise noted.

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plete» happiness always seems to reside some distance ahead: like a horizon, known to retreat whenever you try to come nearer (Bauman, 2008, p. 20).

A COMPLEX DEFINITION

Therefore, guidance is facing the crisis, too. «Like all the other crisis, this one has also produced moments of confusions, even if the final outcome will proba-bly be the redefinition of guidance's identity towards an effective response to to-day's doubts» (Batini, 2012).

The dishomogenous diffusion of guidance's actions – as it is read in 2014 Guidelines for permanent guidance (Linee guida per l'orientamento permanente del 2014) –, the complexity and «polysemy of the term guidance and thus the interpretative plurality and its operative translation [...]» are matters of fact and have to be ac-cepted in the awareness of the centrality of guidance, which demands today «new hermeneutic interpretations and theoretical and practical research paths able to contribute to give sense and meaning to a founding category of educational pro-cess, which is becoming more and more relevant in nowadays complex society» (Loiodice, 2012).

But in spite of its difficult definition and the epistemological and praxis chal-lenges it is faced with, guidance represents, today more than ever, an undeniable «social good», an «economic good», ineluctable dimension necessary to build an inclusive, activating and enabling welfare, so that – Pombeni writes – from a «private fact» it has become a «problem of public interest» (1994, p.2). It is thus fundamental, as reminded by the Guidelines, to activate politics and interventions useful to build an «educating guidance community» in which all actors involved take charge of the social and economic development, employability and social inclusion.

It offers itself not only as an educational and vocational guiding process but also as a more complex process of person's accompaniment, as a process of choice-based education and therefore, the means for preventing exclusion, devi-ance and marginalisation, thus claiming its fundamental category of human exist-ence.

«Because it is a tool of strong involvement of one's cognitive, emotional, mo-tivational and relational sphere, as well as a noble method of facilitation – though in the light of responsibility and correctness of the individual and the system – for the acquisition of cultural DNA we previously mentioned, and because it is a process of discovery, development, rediscovery and enhancement of the genuine aptitudes and interests in the post-compulsory educational paths, guidance, so understood, begins today to be considered as a decisive element not only for persons but also, considering the globalization era, for Countries' destinies» (Domenici, Margottini, 2007, p. 108).

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This point is also underlined in the accompanying letter to Guidelines in which it is indicated that guidance is not only understood as a «tool for managing the transition between school, training and job, but it also acquires a permanent val-ue in the individual life, thus guaranteeing the development and support in the processes of choices and decisions, with the aim of promoting active occupabil-ity, economic growth and social inclusion […], it acquires a strategic role with a growing impact on the entire society and, mostly, on everyone's future».

If is true what Freire and Don Milan affirmed when they claimed the role of education in «giving back the word», «relieving from the fear» and building a crit-ical awareness, it is also true that today educating is not enough. Informing is not enough.

De Masi reminds us that we are «the greater collective and educated brain» ever existed, nevertheless knowing is not an indicator of happiness, «there is no progress without happiness» (De Masi, p.10).

Therefore, the term guidance (the theories and operational practices it repre-sents) acquires a complex meaning that has to be thought and planned following what, according to us, are three distinctive pedagogical strongholds.

The first stronghold is based on the capacity to keep the relation between auto- and hetero-direction strong and dynamic, that is between a model of guidance seen as a process involving the bi-dimensional relation between the one who knows and the one who does not know, and a model of guidance seen as a pro-cess of autonomous and responsible self-training and self-direction. Here the reference goes to the lifelong capacity of an individual to «be able to guide him-self» through the acquisition of a «methodological mind, […] an explorative hab-it, […] a prediction skill, […] a deciding custom, […] a planning capacity that is able to animate, making a continuous appeal to a critical awareness and a presen-tification of the future» (Rossi, 1979, p. 504). At the same time, it is evident that those competences are not innate, on the contrary, they need to be cultivated and promoted from the earliest age thanks to some reference persons (parents, teachers, educators, etc) and occasions, experiences and training feedbacks, which, besides promoting knowledge, also promote, in the long term, compe-tences of life guidance.

The second stronghold takes for granted the longitudinal and diagonal guidance's dimension throughout life in a lifelong and lifewide learning perspective.

The same has been asserted by the Council of the European Union in its Resolution of 28 May 2004 in «Strengthening policies, systems and practices in the field of guidance throughout life sets out the key objectives of a lifelong guidance policy for all European Union citizens» where it is affirmed that guid-ance refers to «a continuous process that enables citizens at any age and at any point in their lives to identify their capacities, competences and interests, to make educational, training and occupational decisions and to manage their individual

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life paths in learning, work and other settings in which those capacities and com-petences are learned and/or used».

This view of guidance introduces the third stronghold that considers the «syn-chronical-final» model as overtaken by a more complex diachronical-training model, which integrates the functional dimension with the existential one.

This perspective integrates the functional dimension of guidance, which is es-sentially intentional and structured and aims at offering «geographical» and in-formation means for professional and/or training choice and vocational update, in line with the continuous technological progresses and contemporary changes of the knowledge-based society, with its existential dimension, which is linked to individual's socio-cultural, intellectual, aesthetic dimension. In this way, subjec-tivity is promoted and the integration between the knowledge of hearing and the knowledge of thinking is capitalized. This integrated model «aims at founding in each pupil from the earliest school age those cognitive and emotional-motivational conditions that lead him or her to the discovery, rediscovery and development of inclinations and authentic interests […] not exclusively influ-enced by social, economic and cultural elements; furthermore, those conditions may lead him or her towards the main information sources and conscious mak-ing of decisions in formal and informal, real and simulated contexts» (Domenici, 2007, pp.109-110).

Guidance ought thus to be thought and achieved from a new and more com-plex consideration on the training process and its implications that are more or less visible on the economic and cultural development of the society and on in-dividual's social, psychological and physical wellness. It means to overtake a purely instrumental vision in order to adhere to a more global and integrated vi-sion – we may say ecosystemic – of the individual and training, based on the «development of the person in his or her globality, that is the person who learns to be» (Delors, 1996, p. 80) and who rediscovers and shows the need to reflect upon his or her identity.

Therefore, guidance cannot be thought and planned only for information in-terventions or as a mediator between a professional profile and a workplace or a training course, in other words as a functional intervention only coming from the utilitarian logic connected with market's needs. The instability, complexity, li-quidity of nowadays society do not only need alphabetic, literacy-based, technical and vocational competences, but they also need the development of competenc-es of choice, decision making, problem solving, management of the change that enable to pass the traditional concept of information guidance in favour of new forms of guidance of a formative and maturity-based nature, combining the requests for information and contents transmission and the requests for the construction of sense and meaning, of planning, personalisation and individualisation.

This is also reminded by the Recommendation 2006/962/CE of the Europe-an Parliament and by the Counsel of 18 December 2006, on the key competenc-

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es for lifelong learning in which together with the communication in the mother tongue and in foreign languages, digital, mathematical, scientific and technologi-cal competences, the hope is also to promote both in young and adults metacog-nitive competences (learning to learn), social and civic competences («personal, interpersonal and intercultural competence and all forms of behaviour that equip individuals to participate in an effective and constructive way in social and work-ing life»), sense of initiative and entrepreneurship (creativity, innovation and risk-taking, as well as the ability to plan and manage projects in order to achieve ob-jectives, etc.), cultural awareness and expression, «which involves appreciation of the importance of the creative expression of ideas, experiences and emotions in a range of media».

Therefore, it is in this sense that guidance process ought to combine func-tional reasons with existential ones and imagine to take care of the pupil-citizen-worker.

It must see the individual involved in bounding the threads of his or her emo-tional, cognitive, formative and professional history; combining the requests both for reasons and emotions; recognising and recognising himself, always in the perspective of future plan and existential project. In fact, the action of choice, planning and change involves individual's multidimension, it thus needs to bring into play its cognitive and emotional operations, affections, beliefs, val-ues that influence it. In this direction, guidance has to be seen, first of all, as an auto-cognitive process that implies the capacity of the individual to understand him/herself, accept him/herself, monitor his or her way of learning and relate him/herself to others, have self-esteem and a good level of self-efficacy. As we told above, it is about a process both autodirected and guided that is also repre-sented as «reinforcement of a personal point of view and perception, of a per-sonal project in continuous becoming» (Cunti, 2008, p. 22). After all, the term guidance comes from the present participle of the Latin verb orior that means the research of the North position, which helps to determine the right direction. A voyage of research and transformation that acquires the double meaning of wan-dering during a travel and experiencing the error.

The same etymological root implies the categories of hope, possibility, change and transformation. That evident utopian and metabletic dimension that is fun-damental in this period characterised by risk, uncertainty and displacement and that may be considered as a continuous exercise of empowerment, resilience, au-toefficacy, adaptability and capability.

Against the risk that guidance policies might be crashed by the logic of profit and utility, guidance goes beyond the limits of information to invade and pervade the ones of communication, relationship and training, since it is a complex, dy-namic, shared and situated process. It is not by chance that Pombeni stresses this complex and ecosystemic dimension of guidance process, underlining that it is «an active process that accompanies the person throughout his or her life experi-

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ence; managed by the individual by his or her own resources (personal and so-cial) and with reference to his or her own experiences (formative and vocational); influenced by his or her own belongings (social groups, local community, family context); historicized, that means inside a certain type of a formative system and of a complex and global labour market, primary and secondary; attentive to cul-tural diversity and gender specificity of each actor of the process; promoted in-side the individual through vocational practises having different goals (self-guidance, vocational consulting, etc.)» (Isfol, 2006, p. 67).

This idea is perfectly ascribable to an action of rational and historical guid-ance. The same formative action, translated into «learning to learn», directly transposes the training action's objectives from a level of knowledge and behav-iours to the one of human being, thus transferring also training action's goals from an instrumentally political, ethical or social level to the one of the reaffir-mation of human values, starting from the capacity to reconstruct life, survey and research directions. Which also means critics, resistance and affirmation.

A guidance that does not have «lighthouses» nor «compasses» but that rather needs to found its action only on a reflexive construct, which knows how to rec-ognise and build its own «signpost», starting from a synergic practise of an anti-dogmatic and dialectical rationality and of a sensitive and diagnostic pragmatics. «Hence guidance may represent for the individual what for the navigators of Puluwat island, in the Pacific Ocean, represents the Etak. 'Etak – as the cognitive psychologist U. Neisser writes – is the organisational principle of the cognitive map that enables navigator's journey. It works, like all orientation schemas, by receiving information and directing action' [Neisser, 1993, p. 129]. If the com-pass, the traditional metaphor by which guidance is described, indicates a direc-tion, the Etak principle, certainly abstract, teaches how to read the variety of in-dications coming from signals like waves or birds' flight. Collecting information and directing actions autonomously, according to a cognitive schema in constant evolution: that is, at the moment, one of the main needs of the individual in his or her ongoing process of guidance» (Traetta, 2009, p. 16).

GUIDANCE BETWEEN SCHOOL, UNIVERSITY AND WORK

Pombeni underlines that, over these years, guidance has acquired a triple function of «reception and guiding information; accompaniment and guiding tu-toring in training and vocational paths (of employment/unemployment); guiding counselling for training choices and vocational projects» (Isfol, 2006). Consider-ing that guidance is a permanent educational task, a complex process of accom-paniment service provided to person throughout his or her life and in the variety of contexts in which he or she lives, grows and learns, it is thus evident that some contexts play a crucial role. Educational system (school/university) and en-trepreneurial system are, according to us, the places where it is possible to openly

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and intentionally develop and employ those guiding competences useful to navi-gate in today's society.

School, as a space of education and socialisation, is the first place, after the family, where the child, the future adult, may acquire and employ, on one hand basic competences, on the other transversal ones, such as decision making, sense making, group work, etc. Guiding at school means to exercise the right of educa-tion for all and promote talents, but it also means to recognise students' cogni-tive and emotional characteristics, supporting, exercising and guiding them not only to acquire competences but also to promote metacognitive and meta-emotional processes, which are recognised by national and international literacy as essential, guiding and sometimes even predictive for succeeding at school. Hence school has the task to foster and achieve «guiding activities for the en-hancement of specific guiding competences», «formative guidance or guiding di-dactics for the development of basic operational competences» as well as «ac-companiment and guiding counselling activities, accompaniment to individual projects, through the exercise of competences of monitoring/management of the individual process» (Guidelines, 2014).

Still too high are the school drop-out rates and the level of explicit and im-plicit wastage, which underline the need to increase guiding policies for the ap-prenticeship of knowledge and of minimum contents and for the development of life skills useful to move into the complex society. This is also possible with a rethinking of disciplines that may be «used» not as recipients of knowledge but rather as lenses to read and interpret reality (Gardner, 1999).

As a consequence, the idea is to dismantle the stereotype of the discipline as a mere recipient of knowledge and information in favour of a discipline seen as a constitutive element for competences' acquisition, in order to build one's own life project. Such Ministerial documents have accepted the invitation of Oms (Life skills education in schools – 1993) to foster the acquisition of life skills, i.e. those «competences that lead to positive attitudes and adaptation which enable the individual to face efficaciously the requests and challenges of everyday life», in other words those key competences of citizenship that enable student to ac-quire, thanks to the compulsory education up to 10, «the full development of the construction of the self, significant and right relationships with others and a positive interaction with the natural and social reality» (see the Attachment to the Regulation of the Decree of the Ministry of Education, n.139/2007).

In this sense, guidance at school may, on one hand, accompany the individual towards an educational and vocational choice, on the other enable him or her to choose consciously and responsibly, in an active and participated way, bringing the dimensions of self-esteem, auto-efficiency, causal attribution, etc. into play. And it is not enough. School guidance also aims at fostering that integrated sys-tem dear to Franco Frabboni that builds synergies and collaboration between school, university and work, and that may thus realise the pedagogical ideal of

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helping learner to be integrated and integral, empowered and capabilited, in other words to be able to act and choose from his or her own resources.

In this optic, on the operational level, school must promote: 1. an effective approach of each learner to all disciplinary areas of school

pathways; 2. a systematic survey […] of the relations that […] are established between

the development of cognitive sphere and the development of emotional-motivational sphere in each one and in all students;

3. the promotion of conditions that improves in each student an autono-mous life project, a self-evaluation of his or her own interests, aptitudes and as-pirations;

4. a systematic information on the different learning pathways […] and on the labour market at all levels […] and the capacity to handle and efficiently use the information for the resolution of different problems [...];

5. the construction of contexts adequate to promote in everybody the capac-ity to take decisions in the different circumstances (Domenici, Margottini, 2007, pp. 118-119).

This is possible by matching the holistic and ecosystemic approach that un-dertakes to activate integrated strategies useful to a long-term existential project.

The same can be said about University that, as asserted many times, must of-fer itself not only as a recipient of knowledge but also as a laboratory of compe-tences, where the same didactic quality depends on the capacity to match theory and praxis and train not only full but also and mostly «well-done» heads (Morin).

As an instance, we may consider the indication of Dublin descriptors that underline the need for university education to promote, besides knowledge and understanding skills, also communicative and learning skills, autonomy of judgement, etc., «citizenship competences».

Moreover, recent data of the Ministry of Education (MIUR) and Isfol have stressed that university wastage, though decreasing after the reform, is still a par-amount problem in the pedagogical thinking-acting. If this is true for the explicit wastage that, though it is an unsolved problem, is easier to assess and lends itself to faster preventive interventions and retaking actions, it is not the same for the implicit one, submerged, which is due to the wastage of cognitive potentials and talents, students' inadequate handling of their own cognitive resources and of their low awareness and participation to the learning process, but first, to their low level of awareness and planning at the time of the choice of their university pathway. Still too high is the number of students placed on supplementary years because of the difficulties they met during their study or the failure of their study choice, and still many are the students who drop-out after the first year because they are unable to make aware choices and handle their learning processes, thus causing learning and vocational failure. The interaction of the different reasons of dropping-out makes the situation more complex and confused: from the in-

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ternal reasons due to the student (his or her knowledge, competences, inner mo-tivations, etc.) to the external ones, depending on the university institution (or-ganisation of times, places and learning strategies, personal and life history of the student, factors such as impermanence, instability, confusion and displacement of the society in which we all live).

Together with the promotion of talents, the struggle against implicit and ex-plicit wastage, in its diachronic-procedural and learning dimension, the goal of university guidance policies is certainly also the placement and the development of a vocational project. Guidance to and at work needs a separate discussion. The same Guidelines remind us how necessary is today «to lead to system the learning of the culture of work and entrepreneurship».

The entry in the labour market of a young worker is an arrival point but also a new starting point. Together with the young man in search of a job and the NEET who need to be accompanied and to develop competences of agency and capability, it is also real that adult confronts himself or herself (and face) with premature lay-off, mobility, replacement, company reorganisation, etc. In the first case, university and school take on the difficult task of guiding the formative offer towards the labour market demand, albeit preserving, and it is important to underline it, their primary cultural task.

On a curriculum level these institutions may reduce the scissors between the-ory and praxis, welcoming in the classrooms privileged witnesses and concrete examples while, at the same time, innovating and renovating didactic strategies and methods useful to the development of knowledge and competences.

On the institutional plan, it may be possible by enhancing the continuous confrontation and exchange with the territory, facilitating territorial tables, local partnerships with public and private bodies, which may become protagonists of policies of school-work alternance, thus building a bridge between learning and occupability.

Moreover, in the Guidelines it is read as follows: «in the school and learning world, guidance cannot be reduced to the psychological and individual dimen-sion of knowledge of the self but it must be extended to a social and cultural projection with regard to belonging communities, social and professional identi-ties, historical memory, shared values and work ethics».

On a more specific educational plan, this means to question itself on new learning emergencies, adopting the culture of the «good work» and «good guid-ance». In the second case, it is about to take into account the transformations in the labour world that need a strong commitment of the learning policies. Once overtaken the idea of a long life employment, more and more frequently the so-ciety of works asks young and less young workers to change their job because new competences are required, even within a permanent work position. These are professional biographies «at risk» characterised by «an almost constitutive un-certainty» (Bresciani, Franchi, 2006, p. 39) before and after the definition of the

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career. «Career becomes nomadism across many places and many roles […] pro-fessional goals interfere more and more with personal and civil goals» (Bocchi, Ceruti, 2004, p. 7). Nowadays we are facing professional transitions of a work that is never the same and needs quick and long-lasting guiding interventions, which require the activation of profiles able to be resilient and empowered and flexible to the change, risk and uncertainty.

These are «emergencies» that may be solved through the promotion of guid-ing paths, capacities and supports to personal and professional projects, through practicing forms of understanding, mediation, interpretation of behaviours also in order to foster professional reflections and self-knowledge management, which may translate the experiences into new apprenticeship. In this way, together with guiding interventions for the training of competences needed for the active re-search of work, placement, autoplacement, self-marketing, professional update and requalification, it is necessary to consider, also and most of all, those guiding inter-ventions useful for the re-planning, redefinition and enhancement of the existing vocational projects, in other words those professional biographies that, today more than ever, know the risk, the insecurity, the crisis and, more in general, the com-plexity.

«If at the beginning of the 20th century the goal of guiding processes was to achieve the match between individuals and occupations […], at the middle of 20th century the commitment was to determine factors and stages of a longlife process of a career development […], now in the 21rst century, the goal of each guiding action is to enable persons to plan their lives as best they can, despite the complexity of the society in which we live» (Di Fabio, 2014).

The reference goes quickly to the theories of Guiscard and of Savisacks, the former more general about life design, the latter more specifically shaped on the career construction, that seem to us to be particularly effective because they combine the dimension of guidance counselling with the self-directed one. Such theories are strongly connected with the idea of an active participation of the individual to his or her process of construction of a life and/or vocational project, which considers him/her as a «proactive agent» who is able to self-organise and manage his or her own experiences and competences.

In this perspective, it is essential for the construction of an efficient project to acquire career management skills necessary to autonomously analyse, select, syn-thetize all information coming from the educational, training and labour world, as well as «to take decision and face moments of transition. Learning these com-petences may help individuals manage non-linear career paths (learning and vo-cational)» (Guidelines, 2014).

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THE PEDAGOGY OF CRISIS FOR THE «SOCIETY WITHOUT GUIDANCE»

In the light of what has been said hitherto, it is therefore evident that guid-ance has acquired all the characteristics of a pedagogical category. But the real challenging question is: is it possible to guide and to guide oneself in a «society without guidance»?

Are the necessary competences innate and thus the asset of a few? «Whose responsibility is it to elaborate [a] new model for the crisis? Who

possesses the experience, wisdom, brilliancy, bravery to sketch it? Does an em-bryo already exist anywhere?» (De Masi, 2014, p.12).

We reply yes to De Masi's questions. A «pedagogical yes» that sees in pedagogy, in men and women's longlife train-

ing and in its operators the privileged guiding mediators who are able to promote competences, which are clearly not innate but may be nurtured from the earliest years of life.

A «pedagogical yes» that recognises that pedagogy, for its logical, ethical, heu-ristic, methodological nature, which is like a tattoo on its critical and reflexive, hermeneutic and problematic skin, may answer the question «on», «for», «of» the future, project and wandering seen in its double meaning of need of voyage and need of error, which are functional categories of the research of the future. Of course, the other temporal dimensions are equally important for the integrated and integral men and women's learning. But the lack of clairvoyance, the short-age of perspective and the scarceness of projections may mean for pedagogy the failure of its principal task that is project's construction.

And this is both a social and political responsibility in its wider and deeper sense.

In front of this situation, we then believe that the problem of contemporary pedagogy is not to learn to manage the crisis, which is «to walk in the quicksand» as Bauman says; a goal pedagogy has always set. We rather believe that the real challenge is to move across the crisis, without losing the point of references and trying to find new ones: the great challenge is thus to learn and guide in the cri-sis, «get involved» in it and «get dirty» of it but get out of it in an updated and re-defined way.

Besides all, as De Masi underlines, «perhaps it is not the reality to be in crisis, perhaps is our way of interpreting it and our explanatory models to be in crisis. Seen that mental categories we inherited from the industrial age are no more able to explain us the present, we are induced to be suspicious about the future, swinging between disorientation and fear» (D. De Masi, 2014, p.11).

De Masi also reminds us that «any sphere is immune to this disorientation: […] we do not know whether this disorientation represents a symptom of devel-opment or rather the first sign of a collapse. We only know that it causes a wide

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sense of crisis that, in turn, makes the future difficult and risky to plan» (De Masi, 2014, p. 24).

Therefore, the answer we think is that of «a pedagogy after the pedagogies» that adopts «a bold project which is at the same time a guide path and an arrival line» (Cambi, 2006, p. 26) and that looks at the postmodern society and its con-tradictions non only as a lost but also as an opportunity, as «time to receive and […] certainly to govern too, putting at the centre a social commitment […] and the individuals' learning» (Cambi, 2006, p. 26).

A Pedagogy which first of all re-orients itself in terms of models, languages and means in an historical moment in which, De Masi recalls, «the lack of an in-terpretative model, indeed the interpretative emptiness of a non-model, [that] makes us defenceless» (2014).

It is thus a Pedagogy that accepts the challenge, that opens itself to the risk, future, anxieties the present brings with itself, complexity, liquidity and «towards them it acts as validation, regulation and– also – possible achievement» (Cambi, p. 27).

A commitment that, albeit transitory and not decisive for the problematic as-pect of the experience, takes on the engagement of an ethic responsibility that reconstructs the continuity between tradition and innovation, always in the re-spect of man's generativity (Bertin).

As De Masi affirms (reminding us provokingly that we live in a society with-out guidance), «a century ago, if a doubt had arisen in a person's mind, he would have had books, doctrines, slogans, programs and masters to hang on to. […] Once we have refused the ideologies, killed the masters, loose the leaders, which model, which teaching must we adhere to, we who are the bewildered of the third millennium?» (De Masi, p. 27). Again we reply: to Pedagogy. To a Pedagogy of the «society without guidance», which has to take into consideration a re-thinking of its theoretical, methodological and practical paradigms, which has to adopt an emancipative dimension (where emancipation is the fruit of critical en-gagement and dissent) and which is aware that – as Domenici asserts – «guidance and self-guidance represent behavioural and intellectual operations that are par-ticularly complex and difficult».

Pedagogy has an undeniable social role and, through the promotion of think-ing models shaped on reflexivity and metacognition, first on itself and then on the rest of the world, may «be considered as a knowledge that plays an important social role, that is to help to rebuild a new way of thinking both for the individu-al and the society in their "normality" […]. It may offer itself as a disciplinary conceptual structure, as the apparatus of thinking about the thoughts, in this case of a society that has lost itself after the fall of its traditional models, as if, after the fall of these models, the apparatus of thinking had fell too. […] Now, it would be necessary to promote – and Pedagogy, together with other sciences, may assume the role of important guide in this process – the construction of a

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new apparatus to think, based on a new recipient which receives, metabolises, re-elaborates, supports in the creation of flexible boarders and limits» (Riva, 2012).

As a project-based and historical knowledge, it must «reflect on its own ca-pacity to do pedagogy, in a logical sense, in a phenomenological sense and in a hermeneutical sense» (Cambi, 2006, p. 132). It must set itself as an anti-dogmatic and an anti-reductionist action and thinking, able at the same time «to take care, in its whole, of the pedagogical sense, and to relaunch it […] widening its bor-ders» (Ibid., p. 134).

De Masi strengthens the following thesis: in my opinion, the impasse we live comes from the unpleasant and singular

circumstance for which nowadays postindustrial society, differently from other macrosystems before, is not based on a pre-existent model, a paradigm already elaborated and shared: it has issued from a rapid sequence of genial but partial ideas, of surprising technologies and prosthesis but also of unnecessary products, boring rites, senseless conducts, grew up side by side before someone put them into system, theorising them, drawing, planning, protecting and guiding them as a whole […]. A new model does not arise by chance and suddenly: it arises from the remains of all the previous models and needs a strong effort of analysis, fan-tasy, concreteness, that means of collective creativity. First of all, it is thus neces-sary to patiently retrace those models that have been tested throughout human history, throwing the old parts away and stilling what remains of the fruitful juice, intellectuals will value in the elaboration of a new model, finally able to free ourselves from the sense of crisis which lives inside us inhibiting the ideation of a happy future (2014, pp. 18-19).

To reach this model, the Science of Education must de-construct itself, reject outdated and «tired» apparatus, working, as Mariani says, on «that something we are partially aware of and which is considered as a condition of thinking and re-flecting, in the pedagogical field» (Mariani, 2008, p. 84). It is about that «some-thing almost natural. It does not only concern silences, but also pedagogical im-plicit/archetypes, which – anyway – have to be defined and (critically) interpret-ed, de-constructed and reconstructed (through a hermeneutic pit) […]. It is about historical- eidetic a-priori that only a critical-genealogic rereading of the past (starting from the present) may bring out and subject to a rational analysis». Bringing to light the implicit sides and being aware of them is possible only «starting from a deconstruction that frees […] from unconscious conditionings, unsaid prerequisites, hidden infrastructures» (Ibid., p. 85).

At this purpose, in the critical and deconstructionist pedagogical model, Mar-iani tracks down the «effective device for unmasking hidden conditionings […] and for their overtaking towards a thought characterised by "difference" and "dissemination"» (Mariani, 2000, p. 18).

Then, Cambi claims the social, planning, critical, deconstructive and herme-neutical role of Pedagogy which has been able to face changes, revise models,

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etc. over the centuries. As for example, the Pedagogy of the 60ties or the one that has faced the crisis of the modern school, of the «death of the family», etc.

«They are all sides from which strongly emerge the emblem and critical role of an after-the-pedagogies (empirical), [...] which stands as radical and total reflection. [an] "emancipative pedagogy" […] that is able to think ahead the present, the man, the culture, the society […] at the 'service' of a "Progress" and against the "Conservation"» (Cambi, 2006, p. 135).

But the theoretical reflection is not enough. It has also the task to renovate and continuously calibrate its operative-planning-concrete function of a science of the pedagogical «to do» and «to create"». Because it is a generative science, it must claim the training primacy as a process of guidance to person and planning of cultural, social and professional self, aimed at accompanying the individual in the different phases of life and at giving him or her the capacity to take responsi-ble and aware choices on his or her training and professional project, through a culture of the choice and planning.

The Report from the Educational Council to the European Council on the concrete and future objectives of education and training systems, Council of Eu-ropean Union of 14 February 2001, underlines, and this is not by chance, that the society attributes to education and training «-the development of the individ-ual, who can thus realise his or her full potential and live a good life; - the devel-opment of the society, in particular by fostering the democracy, reducing the disparities and inequities among individuals and groups and promoting cultural diversity; - the development of economy, by ensuring that the skills of the labour force correspond to the economic and technological evolution». These concepts have been confirmed in the Resolution of the European Council of 2002, in which it is read that lifelong learning has not only an occupational but also civic, personal and social perspective and presents itself as a pedagogical strategy of promotion of an active citizenship, of a social cohesion and of a personal and professional fulfilment of the individual, as well as a tool of adaptability to the rapid changes of today's complex society.

In the background, the Pedagogy of the utopia that recognises the historicity to be man and woman as «unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality, which, because of its historical nature, is incomplete too. […] In this incompletion and awareness lie the roots of education as an exclusively human manifestation. The unfinished character of human beings and the trans-formational character of reality need education to be an ongoing activity […]. In order to be it is necessary "to be in becoming"» (Freire, 2005, p. 84).

A pedagogy of the radical hope, Freire would have added, aware of the reality and of the risks it runs but also of the possibilities of transformation and change. A pedagogy that believes in its capacity to educate to the planning, the change, the integration and the capitalisation of the crisis as an opportunity. And to do so, it needs the relation, the transformative and dialogical power it carries with it.

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Because, when you think about it, guidance is a relational process of the indi-vidual with him/herself and others (with the world, friends, family, colleagues, trainers, etc.). Guidance is dialogue, an attempt to learn together «to give a name to the world, in view of its transformation», «the means of research, reflection, reasonable approximation to the knowledge» (Vigilante, Vittoria, 2011), which also needs a competent accompaniment.

The form of dialogue we refer to arises from Watzlavich's theory of commu-nication as a relation and not only and not much as information, that form of communication that interprets its etymological root of the Latin verb «to com-municate» in the sense of «to share», «to put in common». Dialog seen not simp-ly as a praxis but, systemically, as formae mentis marked by the doubt, the heuris-tics, the divergence, the opening, the «political fundament», the «reduction pro-cess of the gap from the stranger and strangeness».

A dialogue that achieves its full realisation in the concreteness of the network that «enables to overtake the fragmentation of the services and interventions, which have characterised guidance policies so far, that polycentric service struc-ture that produces in the individuals it is composed of [those who benefit from it] liaisons, sharing, dialogue, communication» (Guidelines, 2014).

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