Abstract

Building upon a reconstruction of Italian teacher training and qualification policies from the 1990s to date, achieved through the study of relevant decisions and multidisciplinary literature, the article represents an empirical application of the institutional layering model in its recent reformulation. It identifies the layering contents in terms of actors, ideas, and policy instruments, as well as the criticalities that are inherent in policy design and implementation, which lead to different types of stratifications. The study has a threefold aim: to analyze and explain the policy dynamics in action, to connect the international public policy literature with the empirical data regarding the national measures examined, and to foster a debate on Italian school education policies from a public policy perspective in the face of the scarcity of scientific contributions in this sense.