In recent years, the literature dedicated to the development of guidance dynamics for envisioning one’s own future has evolved considerably, seeking to provide possible answers to the challenge of shaping young people’s futures.
With the latest reform on educational guidance, schools have been called upon to play a more active role in supporting students’ orientational development. Specific figures—trained tutors and advisors—have been introduced to collaborate with teachers, ensuring that subjects are developed with a guidance-oriented approach, helping young learners identify transferable skills that can support “their process of self-guidance, leading them to learn through subjects and not merely the subjects” (Pombeni, M.L., 2001).
Guidance-based teaching—learning through an orientational lens within disciplines—requires a reinterpretation of curricula to identify individual aptitudes through teaching and learning activities across all educational levels. This functional process, integral to formative guidance actions, aims to give young people the opportunity to begin self-directing their paths, developing the ability to design life and career projects.
Starting with the analysis of their interests and abilities, students are encouraged to independently choose the direction of their future, ultimately shaping their own personal and individual projects.
The curriculum, embedded within the Educational Offer Plan (PTOF), defines and publicly shares the general guidelines and collective designs (macro-planning) agreed upon by institutional bodies. It must then be detailed and practically translated into classroom-level planning.
Thus, the curriculum can be understood as a form of macro-design: the organization of a learning path characterized by vertical continuity, contributing to the guidance process. In this way, it can also respond to the needs of the surrounding community, using disciplinary resources to equip young people with the personal competencies necessary for autonomy, active citizenship, and self-determination.
By moving beyond the old conception of the curriculum and adapting it to the demands of contemporary society, education can place students—along with their needs, aptitudes, and potential—at the center of the learning process. The goal is to cultivate transversal competencies that enable them to navigate constant sociocultural change.
The fluidity and continuity of the curriculum give meaning to what is learned, integrating knowledge and skills into an authentic and meaningful learning experience.
Guidance is a continuous process, carrying formative, global, and unified value in the development of an individual’s abilities, knowledge, and competencies, allowing them to gain awareness, control, and influence over their life and choices.
This process is continuous because it spans the individual’s entire life—from the first social and educational experiences to adulthood. It is formative because it engages the abilities, competencies, and knowledge needed to shape one’s value system. It is also global and unified because educational choices must fit into an evolving and wide-ranging life project, enabling degrees of freedom, opportunity, and personal choice.
Within the teaching-learning process, students become active agents of their own educational journey, nurturing curiosity, motivation, and the willingness to learn—while developing dynamic self-reflection and interpersonal awareness over time.
These values foster greater opportunities for self-directed learning, balancing formal and informal educational experiences while encouraging reflection on the contexts in which learning occurs.
The challenge is to learn how to teach with a guidance-oriented mindset—a didactic function that many teachers already perform, often without full awareness of it.
Such guidance processes will enable young people to play an active role in making choices, exploring familiar areas of knowledge, and continuously shaping and reshaping their individual life projects.
Roberta Tardi
Teacher of modern foreign languages, specialized and experienced in inclusion processes, teaching methodology, and educational psychology for specific learning disorders; expert evaluator of teaching processes; trainer in linguistic education and verbal/nonverbal communication for teachers; specialist in teaching Italian as a foreign language, guidance-based teaching and mentoring, educational and professional counseling, supportive communication, and career guidance. Author of articles for specialized journals, essays, and publications.
