Conference Program

The work we present refers to the epistemology and practice of dance philosophy labs, which are part of an alternative philosophical-pedagogical-educational perspective that looks towards new paths of thought in motion. The hypothesis is that through the dancing actions of the body, one can acquire a new ability to understand and interpret the world. Participants are guided through the methodologies of Philosophy for Children (Lipman 2005; Cosentino 2008), and contemporary dance on a sensory and kinetic journey (D’Ambrosio-Spada 2021; Aldred &Aldred 2023), fostering awareness of communicative and creative movement towards new paths of thought processing. Somatic-choreographic practices, starting from the smallest sensations and kinetic possibilities such as the heartbeat, breath, and body weight, up to the minimal gesture that transforms into a choreographic sequence, aim to facilitate the independent emergence of questions and reflections stemming from newly 'embodied' awareness. Through a Socratic-maieutic methodology, the birth and acceptance of new words to express sensations, emotions, and concepts born from the moving body are promoted. These are later shared in ’dialogue circles’ where participants learn to engage in democratic dialogue, respecting their turn, akin to a dance, sharing emotions and feelings with spontaneity and immediacy, without overpowering the voice of others. In summary, the labs shape small 'communities of philosophical research,' which, starting from the awareness of one's own movement and kinesthetic feelings, enhance and 'cultivate' sensitive listening skills and profound choreo-somatic semiotic hermeneutic competences, opening up to the acceptance of diversity and the multiplicity of communicative styles and qualities. The space opened up by dance becomes fertile ground for a dialogical thinking that, despite its strong and intense expression, remains attentive and allows engagement to find new paths of recognition and encounter. Therefore, the dance philosophy lab gives life to a philosophical dialogue in which words find space amidst the silent expression of the body, gaining weight and elasticity, lightness and substance, density and suspension.

Physical education is very fit to educate to democracy, especially when didactics includes situations of self-govenment by students, in addition to traditional lessons. Students have valued experiences in assembling teams, in assigning roles, in following each other in turns, in umpiring, in respecting rules of the game, in organizing a tournament and in choosing shared activities. To this end, the teacher has to promote a playful, inclusive atmosphere and has to avoid forms of hero worship, exaggerate competition and mistaken self-government that can cause chaotic situations.

Unlike Debate, which has become widely practiced in our country as a useful method to overcome transmissive teaching and make students active protagonists in the teaching and learning process, Philosophy for Children (P4C) is less practiced and is confined to specific educational contexts. P4C also aims to promote critical and argumentative thinking in young people with the aim, among others, of spreading democratic communication and a concrete practice of active citizenship. Its peculiarity, though, lies in non-competitive argumentation, continuous problematization, and the "circulation" of thought. P4C refers to philosophy understood as a reflective and pedagogical practice important for the community. M. Lipman - who is credited with the development of the foundations of P4C - and subsequent generations, from Matthews to Kohan to Scotton, emphasize the concept of a "community of inquiry" to be implemented with both school students and adults. The aim is to promote reflection and self-reflection abilities, critical thinking, activation of rational thoughts, and the capacity for non-hostile dialogue with others. All of these skills are more necessary than ever in the contemporary context characterized by conflicts, media chaos, and the emergence of complex global situations that cannot be interpreted using established categories. We live in the pervasive era of the post-digital, which requires the experimentation of teaching/learning processes that focus on developing in learners a habit of constantly subjecting stimuli and information from technology to critical and reasoned reflection. Technology not only engages and envelops thought but also lifestyles. From childhood, young people are subjected to continuous heterogeneous stimuli from social media, relying precisely on the unconscious action of users providing data that is used for commercial and political purposes. The ability to critically manage such intrusive stimuli must be inclusively provided to students from primary school onwards. These considerations are the basis of a P4C program promoted during the 2023/24 school year in 11 classes of the first cycle (primary and secondary) in Trentino, aimed at addressing a crucial contemporary issue: conflicts. The project aligned with Goal 16 of the Agenda 2030 "Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions," dedicated to promoting peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development. The educational path was achieved through actions involving universities, local institutions, schools in the Autonomous Province of Trento, and associations. Faced with images of wars, violence, and growing inequalities, educators have the task of addressing these realities, albeit cautiously, by working on emotions, their management, and ultimately leading to more mediated and shared reflections within the classroom group. Through the coordination of the "Antonio Rosmini" Study and Research Center at the University of Trento, a series of 5 sessions per class was organized, managed in parallel by 6 P4C Teachers. These sessions provided gradually articulated discussion stimuli, aiming to reason about internal conflicts, relational conflicts, and social and global conflicts. The contribution presents the main results of the experimentation along with an initial qualitative evaluation of the data collected from the sessions.

This abstract introduces the Cooking Workshop as educational setting, aimed to the development of knowledge and skills in intercultural education interventions for children. From a first qualitative study this setting can adequately support the process of raising awareness regarding the complex values of interculturality.

The preparatory activities for this study required to base the educational project on some essential factors, similarly to the Philosophy for Children model: the participants’ characteristics; the object of awareness raising; the symbolic object that represents the object of awareness in the participants’ concrete experience.

The participants of the workshop are children between the ages of five and seven, or rather children who do not have a solid skill in reading and writing yet. At these ages children normally cannot use the written text to process complex thoughts, despite they already have the cognitive resources that are useful for comprehend those thoughts.

The object (the scope) of awareness, is the concept of plurality in the human identity dimension, that is one of the pillars of intercultural education.

In Hannah Arendt's philosophy, in which Humans are constantly engaged in a inner dialogue with the ‘other’ who inhabits it, suggests to distance ourselves from the narrative of accomplished, self-sufficient and singular Human.

Nussbaum talks about Capabilities. Among these she collects together "senses, imagination and thought", that is non-self-determined thought, but generated by the perception by and the sensitivity towards the of the alterity, and by the imagination, which is also identification with others and empathy.

In accordance with the Philosophy of the Alterity (Buber, Ricoeur and Levinas), Rita Fadda, a pedagogist of the Cagliari school of critical pedagogy, suggests us to "recognize the stranger who inhabits us in other to welcome the foreigner we meet outside of us", pointing out that the openness towards otherness is necessary to undertake subjective journey of self-discovery and development.

Which symbol can summarize, at least at an introductory level, this emerging?

It was decided to implement a cooking workshop, based on the creation of a product with a strong identity: tiramisu. This dessert, known by people of all ages and present in the tasting experience even outside of Italy, immediately evoke the identity dimension of Italianness. However, it has some features that make it suitable for representing the theme of the plurality of human identity: its ingredients. In fact, the coffee and cocoa, that are necessary for the dessert to be recognizable as tiramisu (its identity) are not Italian products nor could they ever be produced in Italy. Tiramisu, therefore, turns out to be the symbol useful to express that uniqueness and singularity are actually made up of different elements, as well as identity is the result of complex interactions between these elements. In the presentation, the theoretical foundations of the pedagogy of plurality will be explored in depth and the first results obtained from the implementation of the cooking workshop in a group of children will be discussed.

Knowledge of languages in Italy and the possibility of accessing content conveyed in a foreign language is still lower than the European average (Rapisarda, 2015). It seems that the historical root of this anti-democratic situation and in contrast with the growing multiculturalism that characterizes our post-modern societies, can be traced back to the fascist school and the ideological representations on foreign languages that were conveyed in that period. It is, in fact, a common opinion that the Gentile reform (1923), the School Charter (1939), the Bottai law (1940) and De Vecchi law (1943) contributed to a worsening of language teaching compared to the previous period. In this paper the interest is to understand the origins of this trend, but also the methods and concepts conveyed, starting from the twenty years of fascism, regarding the teaching of languages and, in particular, of French language. To do this, two paths will be followed: the first concerns a historical-pedagogical approach and the second a linguistic and historical-epistemological approach. The growing fascistization of culture and education during the twenty years of Mussolini's regime also had consequences on the teaching of languages in the school. Through ministerial laws, programs and a comparison with the school publishing of the period examined (Mandich, 2002), the fascist government's approach to language education in schools is investigated, towards which it had an ambiguous and inconsistent strategy of intervention (Balboni, 2009). Thanks to an investigation into the teaching of the French language, it emerges that fascist school policy wasn’t so unitary and that the political will for autarky aimed at eliminating foreign languages sometimes found support but other times obstacles in the new tools of cultural diffusion and of propaganda (Rapisarda, 2015). Through a linguistic and historical-epistemological perspective (Chevalier, 1968; Coffey, 2021) we want to examine the discursive traces on the forms and symbolisms of domination, the foreigner and colonialism (Bhambra et al. 2018). These traces are to be found in the grammar books of the French language published in the period from 1920 to 1945 (Malfatti, 1929; Gerace, 1932; Caricati, 1944) as the grammar books show an ideological state apparatus, that is to say that they represent an essential tool in the practice of power (Althusser, 1970). Grammar books, through mechanisms of denotation, connotation and supernotation, become the totalizing place of the different expressions of the language and represent a practice linked to certain social contexts (Chevalier, 1976). To reflect on linguistic education starting from a historical-educational research on the French language during fascism offers new tools of understanding and new educational strategies to address the current crisis of the democratic cultural model.

Education systems are facing a world in constant and accelerated transformation, including challenges related to inclusion and diversity (Erstad et al., 2021; Rajala et al., 2023). Innovative approaches are needed to build new imaginaries and reinforce transformative capacity for action, empowering young people as agents of social change (Jenkins & Ito, 2015; Fardella et al., 2023). Transformative agency, defined as "the link between people who not only change the world, but are also transformed in this very process" (Stetsenko, 2019, p. 3), is key in this context.

The project 'Educational Roadmap for Transformative Agency - Connecting School, Community and University for Social Change' aims to foster transformative experiences in secondary education through coordinated action between schools, communities, and universities. Implemented in Austria, Chile, Spain, and Norway, the project works with secondary schools implementing projects for educational and social transformation.

In the first phase, schools, communities, and universities assessed existing projects and associated needs, potentials, and difficulties. Universities conducted interviews, observations, and surveys involving principals, teachers, and students to understand contributions to social change and multi-stakeholder collaboration.

This paper presents the initial phase results in Spain, focusing on a public secondary school pioneering educational transformation. The school integrates interdisciplinary projects addressing social issues like sexuality, pollution, colonialism, and human rights. Collaboration with extracurricular communities is crucial, culminating in an annual exhibition to the local community.

To comprehensively analyze needs and concerns, three teacher interviews and a focus group with the management team were conducted. Additionally, a detailed online questionnaire gathered perspectives from 286 students on personal and collective concerns, knowledge about social change, project work opinions, and the influence of digital technologies (Chaves, 2018).

Observations reveal the school's innovative approach but raise questions about project effectiveness and engagement, especially in higher grades. Challenges include assessment alignment, cross-curricular integration, and balancing social justice aims with academic demands.

Despite promoting critical thinking and social awareness, the practical effectiveness of projects and alignment with student and family perceptions remain uncertain. The school must navigate aspirations for social change while considering educational capacities and student expectations.

In conclusion, while the school demonstrates a commitment to transformative education, it faces challenges in bridging educational ideals with practical realities and student concerns. Balancing these aspirations is crucial for effective educational transformation.