ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the first stages of literacy education are put into practice in some first-year elementary classes in central and southern Italy. The situations presented first can be called normal situations, because they can be found daily in Italian schools, often characterized by a pedagogic tradition and common methodological and didactic practices that are not always explicit to teachers themselves. The content and the form of the educational process in such situations are then compared briefly with the form, content, and informative criteria of an experimental situation (Pontecorvo, 1989; Pontecorvo, Tassinari, & Camaioni, 1990).
