Humanities-Business Cooperation: the experience of Parimun Project

University-Business Cooperation and enforcement of the Knowledge Triangle are two of the most important objectives of Europe 2020 strategy and of the modernization process of Higher Education urged by the European Union (CEC, 2011). Several documents, which have been drawn up by the European Commission, highlight the need to improve the cooperation between universities and the business world and to enforce the relationship between Education, Research and Business/Innovation recognized as key drivers for a knowledge society (Swedish National Agency for Higher Education, 2009). How could these proposals be adopted by Social Sciences and Humanities and, in particular, by education and learning research? This paper presents the effects of a University-Business Cooperation experience placed at Padova University. PARIMUN Project - Active Partnership of Research between University and Business - supports students in Education and Training, who plan and realize an intervention-research started from a question asked by organizations on the subject of lifelong learning, adult education, instruction, HR management, educational evaluation. The research offers a “learning practice” proposed to the students and to the organizations and it explores the final formative results in students’ learning. The contribute describes research steps and instruments adopted to promote a reflective attitude for the students during the research process itself. The study was based on the Reflective Practice by Schön (1983) and on Operative Epistemology by Fabbri and Munari (1984; 2005): they both have given a great contribution to foster an analysis of the University-Business Cooperation experience to explore the final formative results that the collaborative research could offer to the three actors of the process: students, professors – directors of thesis - and business partners.