A journey through time. Storytelling, didactical insights and reflections from an informal education project

Abstract

This work stems from the authors’ experience within the third edition of the “Proud of You” project. The project aims to prevent school dropout in some schools located in disadvantaged suburbs of territories in the South of Italy. Its action involves the implementation of informal educational contexts aimed at supporting the development of pupils’ skills in Italian language and mathematics and the improvement of their attitude toward school. The third edition of the project proposed a gamebook to the schools involved, which served as a sense-making framework for the educational activities. The storytelling will also be used in this article to tell about some highlights of the teaching experience in mathematics. This experience, developed in seven short chapters, will be followed by a section of teaching insights and reflections with reference to the theories that formed the background to the instructional design.