To recover a good relationship with our Planet we need to reawaken biophilia, that is, the feeling of affiliation that binds us to all living and non-living beings in Nature. Strengthening a worldview based on ecological relationships requires educational models capable of developing an awareness of how important contact with nature is for the balanced growth of the individual. In contemporary scientific circles, in the 1990s, the term 'Ecopsychology' made its appearance in reference to a new transdisciplinary practice born to respond to the emerging existential and social malaise induced by man's loss of connection with his earthly roots. In the twenty-first century, affective ecology, a new discipline concerned with studying the affective and cognitive relationships that human beings establish with the living and non-living world, also made its appearance.

Ecopsychology aims to reinforce the emotional and spiritual bond that exists between every human being and the natural environment, which is currently forgotten and little cultivated, and proposes exercises and attitudes that broaden the scope of environmental education from a purely didactic and cultural sphere, to an experiential and also emotional one. Since it is not only necessary to give theoretical knowledge, but to generate a sense of belonging, co-participation and responsibility, it is necessary to create an emotional connection between children and nature, and adults and nature: through the contact resulting from direct experience, they can love nature and become responsible citizens.

Starting from these considerations, the article emphasises the importance of basing educational and training processes on the principles of relationship and interdependence, thus on an ecosystemic and transdisciplinary approach that looks at the complex unity of the subject's knowledge and consciousness. After having analysed, in the second part of the discussion, the models of reading the world offered by ecopsychology and affective ecology, the author presents and analyses the educational model of Eco-operative learning, developed within the framework of applied ecopsychology activities and the Ecopsiché-Scuola di Ecopsicologia training courses, as a model capable of acting simultaneously on three levels, the inner, interpersonal and environmental dimensions.

In recent years, there has been increasing recognition of the levels of uncertainty facing children and young people and the urgent need for our national and local governments to become more responsive to the interests of the young, as demonstrated by initiatives such as the EU Strategy on the Rights of the Child (2021). International policymakers working in the field of social justice and the economy have been calling for education “to focus on learning environments and on new approaches to learning for greater justice, social equity and global solidarity” (UNESCO, 2015, p. 3), and for the balance of power to shift towards young people, enabling them to help build flourishing, sustainable and inclusive communities that foster notions of social justice and solidarity (IEA, 2016; OECD, 2018).

Given the current global context of increasing populist, nationalist political movements, the need for pedagogical approaches and educational perspectives that support such learning environments is more important than ever. However, whilst the rise of populism has raised questions about issues of belonging, solidarity and democratic engagement (Archick, 2017), there has been a growing recognition that, despite being offered few formal opportunities to participate in democratic and political life (European Commission, 2021), children and young people have been at the forefront in raising awareness on matters of global injustice and instigating positive change (Ralls et al, 2022).

There is a need, therefore, for policymakers to recognise the power of children and young people’s own actions and their potential to advance innovative developments for an inclusive future (UN IANYD, 2020)—and to better understand the role that pedagogy has in supporting this aim (Ralls et al, 2022). This paper discusses findings from a 42-month international comparative research study that took place across four educational case studies; learning spaces in Barcelona, Berlin, New York and Rio de Janeiro. The research explores urban examples of pedagogical cultures and alternative educational perspectives that explicitly set out to build a sense of relatedness and human collectivity (Amin, 2006) between children and young people and the communities in which they live.

The study uses relational theory (Holland et al, 1998) to understand the different identities and associated notions of power and positionality that emerge in urban education contexts. In doing so, it explores how socio-educational relationships can be constituted to generate the relational goods’ (interpersonal trust, emotional support, care and social influence) (Cordelli, 2015) required for a fundamental shift to a more reciprocal relationship between the state, civil society and citizens (Mulgan, 2012).

The case studies come from diverse spaces and places, yet all their approaches clearly illustrate the belief that education is critical, relational and change-making, with a deliberate blurring of the boundaries between formal spaces of education and the students’ experiences in their wider community. The paper highlights the ways in which redefining education and pedagogical cultures offers hope in a time of democratic crisis, repositioningchildren and young people, not as future citizens to be empowered, but as “power-full” citizens of now (Ralls, et al, 2022, p.28).

How can we respond to the crisis of democracy and, at the same time, guarantee a full personal engagement to each citizen on a social and political level?

Nowadays, several remarkable changes are leaving a profound mark on society, the most relevant ones being globalization; the increasingly unequal distribution of resources; the rapid growth of powerful companies and multinational corporations; the complexity of global migratory phenomena; the exclusion of a large part of the population from productive, economic, social, and political processes. These changes have generated unstable and precarious identity bonds: not only is closeness to the other associated with their acceptance and understanding, it can also trigger frequent divergences and often conflicts. These processes can have negative consequences on the way people participate in the life of their community, on both a political and cultural level. That is why they are closely connected with the pedagogical issues related to human formation and the development of a democratic conscience as citizens.

Before being the best form of government ever theorized and experienced, democracy is the way a community conceives life, and its crisis can perhaps find a solution in active citizenship. Democracy, education, and citizenship are so closely interconnected that the education of man cannot exist without the education of the citizen. In democracy, the development and education of a community are not based on the conflict between social and individual goals, they rather coincide with the enhancement of each citizen. Everyone's experience helps find suitable methods for developing positive behaviours that respect human rights and citizenship; it also improves feelings of belonging to the community and implements participation in political life. The educational models reflect upon the person's belonging to a territory and a social context and tend to orient themselves towards a broader sense of the term citizenship, which include geographical social and cultural perspectives: in this regard, Edgar Morin extends the concept to terrestrial citizenship. Therefore, the need to rethink citizenship education emerges once again to configure broader scenarios and possibilities, since no aspect of political and social life is foreign to citizenship, at local and planetary level.

This paper aims to investigate how pedagogy can support a transformation in this sense, in different educational contexts, with a peculiar focus on schools.

There is no doubt schools are undergoing a severe crisis and are far from fulfilling the educational needs of the new generations on their own. However, they play a key role for community development: despite school projects are often hindered by numerous issues, they represent a useful tool for citizens’ fulfilment and for positive change, since they activate a connection with daily experience and the living environment and stimulate a deeper sensitivity towards the other.

These aspects will be explored, paying attention to the thematic issues, problems, and methods, suitable to promote the full participation of citizens, in community life both from a territorial and global perspective.

This contribution, inspired by the Reggio Emilia Approach and focused on the primary school, is part of a larger doctoral dissertation project and starts from a literature analysis about educational poverty and educational co-responsibility. The aim of this work is suggesting a possible path where dialogue, families' generative resources and capacitation are put at the center and become the fundamental premises to concrete actions against educational poverty at school. Educational co-responsibility calls into question two actors of the educational community, parents and teachers, that need to re-build an educational partnership by sharing values and responsibility and by mutually respecting their competencies (Albanese, Cappuccio 2021). Both actors are required “to respond together to the growth and training needs of the new generations" (Dusi, 2014, p. 7) and to share the idea of a co-responsibility that takes place in co-design. The establishment of the mass school in Italy carries with it the Gentile legacy of “the school for all” that feeds the false myth of equal opportunity and perpetuates the great injustice of "making equal parts among unequals" as denounced by Don Milani (1967, p. 55). The first fundamental reform needed by our school is ideological-foundational in the direction of what Rossi-Doria calls “positive discrimination” (2015, p. 117) whereby it must not be afraid to give more to those who start with less and must cease to make itself an instrument of an unequal social system that "convinces those who have no 'merits and virtues' that the responsibility is theirs" (D’Auria, 2023, p. 211). In order for schools to make themselves emancipatory once again, there is a need for a political-normative and pedagogical cultural renewal that is not lowered from above, but one that can leverage responsibility "from within" (Maresca, 2024, p. 11). When schools are asked to support the participation of families in a co-responsible perspective, in order to make it also a tool for combating educational poverty, it means asking teachers to “open the doors” to dialogue, to welcome as educationally relevant the perceptions of each family, to value and integrate within school life the background of each person and to not be afraid of sharing responsibilities with them. In this way, the school would make itself a regenerative place for the whole community, “the heart of the civil community and democracy that needs to step out of its boundaries" as stated in the Charter "Quality Education, a Global Challenge" drafted by the Reggio Children's Foundation (2022, p. 6). This paper after the theoretical analysis, based on a classic literature review, presents partial data about an ongoing phenomenological mixed-method research, involving primary school’s parents and teachers by collecting their voices through online questionnaires and focus groups. Initial results seem to suggest that “opening doors” could be thought as a strategy to allow parents to be an effective part of the educational community and teachers to feel this alliance not as at risk of role confusion or loss of authority, even when experienced in the planning stages of the educational journey.

Based on the results of the international project #ShareEU, the paper aims to describe the research activities that have contributed to a better understanding of the democratic social processes at work in higher education in the EU, focusing on the surveys and research products that have focused on the value of civic and citizenship competences as fundamental tools for the renewal of teaching practices for the construction of a future shared responsibility of the European higher education system. Starting from a systematic reflection of the literature on educational and social activities related to citizenship and civic competences in the university context, the paper describes some researches and products carried out by the Italian partner, focusing on the analysis of the objectives, contents and values of a multicultural European identity citizenship as elements of curricular continuity at all levels, contributing to the fight against inequalities and ensuring "civic wellbeing in higher education and professional contexts" in order to stem anti-democratic and extremist cultural drifts of any kind. Higher education is often described as a training space where civic and citizenship competences are not considered central. Today, however, there is a growing recognition that they can be seen as true indicators of equity and social justice, also in relation to equal opportunities and cultural and professional literacy processes. The importance of interpreting the civic dimension as transversal in relation to the educational processes in the university field, in terms of cultural rights, active citizenship and democratic culture, contributes to reinterpreting teaching and disciplinary knowledge in the process of building students' cultural and professional profiles and in the path of professionalisation, also through specific programmes. Civic competences make use of transversal competences (critical thinking, problem solving, social responsibility, cooperation, open-mindedness, self-reflection), acting as a link between different types of competences and strengthening the internal coherence of educational pathways. Improving the distribution of civic opportunities in higher education is an important upward factor, which gains further relevance due to its widely recognised correlation with upward mobility, where education is considered one of the main ways to escape the vicious circle of poverty (Peragine & Serlenga, 2008). Therefore, education policies that improve civic opportunities should lead to a higher average level of education among the population and a more equal distribution of education, with the consequence of improving the overall well-being of individuals and reducing social and cultural inequalities within educational processes, increasing accountability, civic engagement and participation. However, if in the past education has rarely given citizenship and civic skills the place they deserve (Beiner, 1995; Heater, 2004; Lawton, 2000), today these types of skills are reserved a key function with reference to the value they play in defining the cultural profiles of the university population and in the cultural framework outlined by the EU, which is responsible for promoting them (Nuzzaci, 2021), also following the changes that have occurred in relation to the process of cultural democratisation that has involved the university system.

Mutually learning to feel the reality of the other as an essential component of orientation towards care means knowing how to wait to feel the other empathically (Mortari, 2013). One can think, that in the apparent dis-order of multiple identities the order generated by sharing finds and can find space: the teacher shares the intellectual and spiritual growth of his students (B.Hooks, 2022), migrants and non-migrants; professional educators share the need and responsibility to ask themselves questions about the idea of ​​citizen, or rather, of Person that society has in mind (Malaguzzi, 1994), be it refugee or legal refugee. Families, but also public/private institutions that deal with children must learn or meta-learn to listen to the little ones, before making any political choice, in the awareness that they have the right to express their opinion every time make decisions that concern them and their opinion must be taken into due account (Art. 12 UN Convention 1989), whether they are unaccompanied foreign minors or Italian citizen minors. Taken as paradigms, or rather as pedagogical devices, listening, observation and care find regulatory space within Law 107/2015 when in art. 3 regulates the establishment of childhood centers which must be characterized as permanent laboratories of research, innovation, participation, and openness to the territory, having a clear understanding of one of the most important strategic objectives of the integrated 0-6 system: the inclusion of all girls and all the children. It therefore appears clear that in a dimension of social justice the role of the educator, the parent, the teacher, the political decision makers is, first of all, to take the participatory principle as a reference in the relationship with the boy/girl, that is assume the belief that the latter has an unprecedented and personal point of view and, as a present and active citizen, has the right to participate as much as an adult in the definition of educational dynamics. This contribution investigates this perspective of the democratic participation of children in political life in an active, generative, and committed way (Mortari, 2008). To this end, a participatory, qualitative research is presented, initiated with a narrative-play approach; an experiential investigation which in its practical implementation focuses on the creativity and personal development of children (Knowles, 1973), with the aim of understanding in depth the emotions and consequent ideas of the little ones, on two areas connected to education democratic: the choices of adult decision-makers or, to use the children's words, "those in charge" and social justice.