Abstract

The Italian school is today called upon to overhaul its organization, to rethink its role, and to reformulate the meaning itself of teaching. The author proposes what he calls an "incoherence system" model as the logical-conceptual framework for the interpretation and management of educational units while respecting their nature as "loosely coupled" systems. Posing the problem of how to govern the operational structures of schools as "loosely coupled" systems amounts to asking what elements and what (causal) links can be appropriately, practicably and usefully hypothesised among them. Selection, agreement and experimentation are the distinctive features of the model proposed, and they can be implemented in the search to strike a balance between individual pressures and organizational requirements.