Incubator of Projectuality: An Innovation-Based Approach to Mitigate Criticalities of the Massive Alternance Scheme Designed for the Italian School-Based Educational System

This article describes the recent introduction of a massive alternance scheme in the Italian schools by means of the so called “Buona scuola” (good school) law. In this article, the authors report on a) the outcomes of a survey carried out on a large sample of high school students attending schools located in the South-East area of Rome; b) a comparison of such outcomes with those contained in a recent report released by Unindustria, the entrepreneurs' union of Lazio Region. The comparison highlights the cultural and organizational limits that affect both the school and the productive systems that have not been able to fully dampen the impact produced by the new alternance scheme. As a consequence, politicians and scholars are called to imagine alternative models and solutions that, at the same time could mitigate the skills gap, increase the students' capacity to read entrepreneurial organizations and, ultimately, contribute concretely to the economic development of the territory. In response to this pressing need, the authors propose, as ASLERD, an approach that has been designed to mitigate the criticalities emerged from their survey and Unindustria's report. The core of the strategy is based on the in-situ simulation of innovation processes and in the development of an open badge system to certificate competences/skills and roles.