Creare comunità di viaggio. Esperienze nella formazione degli animatori di educazione familiare

Abstract

The paper is centred on the figure of family education facilitator, defined by Enzo Catarsi as ‘communication facilitators’, namely educators who have enriched their professional educational skills through a training course. The passage from the role of ‘educator’ to ‘facilitator’ requires specific training, consisting of theories, communication techniques and group management, but also animation techniques (indeed, the Italian job title is ‘animatore’) linked to theatre, play, music and bodily expression. Training courses have been developed in various organisations in Tuscany to train early childhood services’ educational staff to perform the function of guiding ‘talk groups’ with parents. In the preparation and implementation of these courses, it was necessary to identify learning tools to help obtain dynamic-relational and socio-emotional skills able to create the facilitating behaviour and group leading skills required, according to Enzo Catarsi’s indications, of family education facilitators.