New Perspectives in Science Education

This experience is developed in the Program of “School Work Alternation” of Settimo City (Piedmont Region). The project meets two needs: health-social and educational-scholastic. Students, appropriately trained, will have the opportunity, with the patients, to know the main aspect of the illness and, at the same time, become a resource: identifing the real needs of the person who are involved in a proactive relationship that recognizes their dignity. All the patient's live in home.

General Objective:

• Two students of the fourth and fifth years of high school, appropriately trained, the possibility to meet the illness universe experimenting in the construction of a relationship mediated by reading.
• Two patients suffering from chronic degenerative diseases, the possibility of feeling an active part of a path of care that transcends the disease and sees the person as a whole.

Materials and Methods: 

Setting:
The home of the persons assisted by the Service of Home Care (CD) of the ASLTO4, Settimo Torinese District.

Patients:

• People with disabilities, affected by chronic degenerative diseases
• Socially safe families

Students:
Over 18 who have attended at the training course aimed to improve the following topics: communication, relationship, network of Homecare Service of ASLTO4, disease and life project of the patient and family, strategies implemented for illness, reading and multimedia techniques from tool "for me" to "for the other".
Communication and relationship offer useful notions in every professional and personal field.

Experiential phase:
two students go to the patient's home and read songs agreed with him. Reading acts as a facilitator for building a relationship in which the patient, by telling his own story, re-writes it, finds meaning and gives it to them.
There are two moments of re-elaboration guided by a psychologist.
The student collected the description of the individual meetings and final notes regarding the awareness of their experience

Outcome monitoring:
It is deepens if the meeting-reading time have positively influenced the patient's well-being.
The level of students satisfaction has been measured, the awareness of one's own abilities and resources at an essential moment too: when they are called to choose their own personal and professional future and with respect to the usefulness of the relationship as a tool of care.

Results:
In 2018, 160 students have been trained, 24 went to the home of 11 patients from the two higher institutes

Keywords: School Work Alternation, People with disabilities, Students;