Educate to Relationships through Relationships: The Role of Social and Prosocial Abilities in the Construction of Collaborative and Inclusive Educational Communities

Abstract The Youth Report 2014 recognizes the possibility to take positive action towards the others as an element that contributes to let young people achieve a sense of happiness. Despite this, we can observe in schools the presence of individualistic and competitive educational models affirming the predominance of fixed cognitive standards. That can bring to a situation of marginalization of those who are hegemonically located outside of a pre-established definition of norm. Considering these assumptions, the authors have developed an inclusive and prosocial teaching model, based on the Cooperative Learning approach, aimed to encourage prosocial skills among students. The research, that used qualiquantitative data, has involved a sample of 42 students and 12 teachers of the Middle School. The comparison between pre and post test highlights a higher increase in helping dimension and in the subsample of males students, joint to general improvements within teaching-learning processes and relationships.