In a society in which economic logic in the hegemonic neoliberal declination (Foucault, 2002; Bazzicalupo, 2015) seem to pervade and saturate any area of political, social and educational action and thought (Borelli, 2019; Galimberti, 2018; Mancino e Rizzo, 2022; ) is it possible to think and practice education that not only avoids the task of reproducing a- problematically, competitive, and individualistic system, but which takes on the task of re-establishing a participatory society inspired by the shared principle of the common good on the basis of different values, practices and methodologies? This is the question that William Kilpatrick, one of John Dewey's best-known student, proposes and develops in his text Education and Social Crisis (1932). This text was published in the United States three years after the 1929 economic crisis, and the experience of this crisis gave rise to both the proposal for a rethinking of economic reason, inspired by the principles of laissez-faire and the reflection on responsibility which, in this rethinking, can, and indeed must, be taken up by education.

The contribution will focus first on the incredible relevance of the text which is able to name and describe phenomena that have found their most acute expression in recent decades. The phenomena include themes of crisis and uncertainty (Benasayag and Schmit, 2003; Beck, 1999; Rosa, 2013), the rethinking of the experience of work and its meaning (Gorz, 1988; Negrelli, 2013; Nicoli, 2015; Coin, 2023), the role of the school and the teachers position regarding social context (Biesta, 2017; Del Rey, 2013;).

Subsequently, some issues raised by Kilpatrick will be explored in depth and will be open to questions about current educational practices. What challenges and questions does asocial crisis bring to the educational practice? What role is attributed to education in the face of a society's need to restructure its way of being? How to ensure effective knowledge and participation of citizens in social and political affairs, consistent with a democratic life? What does it mean for education to act "rightly" outside of the risk of indoctrination?

Finally, space will be left for some proposals that Kilpatrick, consistent with his pragmatist approach and the questions raised in his reflection, puts forward with respect to educational practice. However, these are proposals that, while reiterating some widespread indications in the current rhetoric on education (life long learning, enhancement of implicit education), seem to completely overturn the meaning and content of these proposals, offering original and useful avenues for thought and action.

Taking inspiration from the author's reflection , this contribution intends to develop some lines that seem promising for re-establishing educational thought and practice starting from a clearer awareness of the political role of education (Dewey, 1916) and a new social responsibility for professionals of education.

The purpose of this paper is to share and discuss some results from a Swedish case-study, performed within a larger HORIZON 2020 project (2021-2024), and concerning the conditions and potential of educational commons (Pechtelidis & Kioupkiolis 2020) to promote more equal and inclusive education. Several conditions decisive for this potential to be activated are identified and analysed: 1) the image of children and teachers, 2) the definition of the educational task, and 3) methods and theories used in educational practice and research. These conditions are discussed in a critical analysis of policy-documents and neoliberal modes of governance in education as well as in terms of how they were creatively activated within a Playworld/Interactive performance where children, preschool teachers, headteachers, artists and researchers explored a common research question on human beings’ place in nature and culture.

The critical policy-analysis is theoretically framed by historian of ideas Michel Foucault (1975/1991) and philosopher Henri Bergson (1934/2007) in an investigation of philosophical and scientific foundations of definitions of equality and inclusion as well as subsequent subject-positions attributed to children and teachers as commoners, or not. The creative activation of the Playworld/Interactive performance is theorized as a commoning practice with support from Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (Cole & Engeström 2006). Finally, the plant neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso’s work on human beings’ place in nature and culture is invoked to theorise the new common goods created by children and adults in the Playworld/Interactive performance. Playworlds are a methodological approach originally developed by educational scholar Gunilla Lindqvist (1995) that focus on arrangements that motivate adult-child joint development and engagement in socio-dramatic play. In the case study it was integrated in the joint creation of a shared imaginary world loosely based on children’s interests in plants and robots, and it was further supported by the methodological approach that participant artists’ work with through staging extra-verbal, aesthetic and performative materials and processes to promote more equal and inclusive practices (Kollaborativet 2022).

Our results show that current policies and governance of education are driven by a three-folded reproductive, compensatory and linguistic logic. This logic gives a deficit image of children and teachers, reduces the educational task to simple transmission of knowledge and omits multimodal ways of existing and communicating in educational practices. These conditions are assessed as inefficient and even counterproductive in the promotion of equal and inclusive education. In contrast, our results from the Playworld/Interactive performance show that the potential of educational commons to promote equal and inclusive education can be activated if,

• the image of children and teachers is embedded within an intergenerational search for meaning where both children and teachers are conceived as contributing commoners,
• the educational task is defined as complementary and as the creation of commoning practices that include imagination, play and the creative co-construction of narratives,
• methods and theoretical tools carry an aesthetic variety that promotes both sensory-perceptual experiences and individual and collective memories as well as children and adults’ formulation of a common object of knowledge in the creation of new commons.

In our contribution we focus on time as an important actor in educational commons. We discuss the crucial role of time in inclusion and exclusion processes and for the concept of the commons (Bollier & Helfrich 2019; Pechtelidis & Kioupkiolis 2020) on various levels. We draw on data from our ethnographic project ‘Occupying Public Urban Space with Stunt Scooters’, which is situated in the non-formal education setting of child and youth work (Eßer et al. 2023).

In social work, it is primarily adults or institutions of the adult world that use time to determine when certain opportunities are (un-)available. They determine who has access to certain areas and educational settings. Time can therefore be seen as an instrument for creating generational order. However, time is not only a powerful tool in organizing time slots. It also determines, through ‘duration’ and the length of membership of a group, who can occupy a powerful position within that group. Hence it is part of practices of differentiation in youth and childhood spaces. Children and young people are aware of time and its power, but they also have limited time at hand, which needs to be organized as well. Thus, time is the result of interrelated practices (Hillebrandt 2023) that have a duration, a beginning, and an end, and refer to past and future. This can be shown in our study. At the researched skate park, signs and times of use provide actors with new possibilities for action and serve as references for inclusion and exclusion. Firstly, the skateboarders, who see the right of prior use as theirs due to the duration of the use of the skate park, are given a reason to exclude scooter riders from this place. Secondly, the scooter riders are called upon to actively deal with the time regulations. After all, they themselves know that the signs are actually there to organize the activities on site. In this interplay of subjective and objective times, time is produced in practice by all those involved – social workers and user groups alike (Orlikowski & Yates 2002).

Referring to the concept of the educational commons, it is essential to examine and analyze all aspects that structure and order the practice – time being one of them. After all, the core of the educational commons is about confronting powerful structures and inequalities and render the latter ineffective. Thus, it makes sense to focus on time as a crucial actor of inequality and power relations. We advocate not underestimating time and recognizing that time practices produce inclusions and exclusions. Simultaneously, the commons perspective offers the possibility of understanding time as a common good, so that in the conception of educational spaces and educational commons, time does not become a factor of inequality. Instead, the emphasis should be on making time equally usable and available, and on reflecting on when time is powerfully ‘allocated’ and becomes an instrument of authority.

The present paper proposes heritage education as a field of research and practice designed at fostering children's participation and their awareness of being cultural actors. Investigation of the literature on heritage education often shows a tendency to focus only on natural heritage or cultural heritage, understood as mobile or non-mobile physical goods, or on the promotion of local folklore.

In the quest for a interpretative framework that puts into dialogue and shows the correlation between the various expressions of heritage, this contribution proposes the approach taken in the debate on intangible heritage initiated by the 2003 "UNESCO Convention on the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage". The so-called "paradigm of the intangible" (Lapiccirella, 2015), in fact, turns the attention from cultural objects to subjects, addressed as "heritage bearers" and, more generally, as actors involved in the identification and meaning-making processes of heritage (Cirino, 2017; Lapiccirella Zingari, 2017, Giancristofaro & Lapiccirella Zingari 2020). Through a bottom-up approach, then, safeguarding actions suggested by the Convention engage individuals as co-researchers and co-constructors of knowledge.

In the context of heritage education this approach entails going beyond a mere transmission of knowledge to foster experiential and participatory processes with children (Berti, 2023; De Nicola et al. 2022).

The aim of this contribution is to recognise not only the relevance of designing educational activities, in formal and non-formal education contexts, in order to facilitate the production of a plurality of narratives and interpretations by the subjects involved (Del Gobbo et al. 2018), but also to propose the children's engagement in safeguarding actions, such as researching and mapping heritages on the territory as well as contributing to participatory inventories. According to childhood studies (Melton et al., 2014), involving children in a process of research, identification and knowledge production as co-researchers certainly includes recognising their right to be listened, and, first and foremost, giving appropriate weight to what they express while taking seriously their way of acting and meaning-giving in their daily lives. In this regard, Lundy (2012) stresses the importance of "developing deliberate strategies to assist children in the formation of their view" (p. 131) to ensure their participation. And again, with Biesta, the centrality of subjectification offers the route to "arousing a desire in children [...] to exist as subject of their own life" (Biesta), towards an education that connects subjects in and within the world (Biesta, 2022, pp. 46-47).

Finally, the contribution presents two examples of ongoing heritage education projects that embrace the intangible heritage approach, emphasising the relationship between community and territory, in a formal education (primary school) context and in a non-formal one.

Today, the use of digital technologies in schools is an undeniable fact. Following the global pandemic of Covid-19 the digitalization of this sector has been forced to accelerate, especially in terms of the entry of digital platforms into the classroom (Castañeda et al., 2020). This new contextual framework has led to the transformation of educational practices, knowledge and experiences through these tools and is known as platformisation. In this sense, this phenomenon refers to the digital restructuring experienced in society, specifically in the field of education (Poell et al., 2019; van Dijck et al., 2018). At the same time, there has been an outsourcing in the provision of these services and tools that are provided by large technological corporations (Saura et al., 2021) in exchange for, apparently, nothing, thus incorporating private companies in the education sector. The aim of this research is to explore the challenges that the privatisation of education may bring with regard to the entry of commercial digital platforms into schools . To this end, a systematic review has been carried out focusing on the concept of platformisation and the challenges it entails. The main results show, on the one hand, that those involved in education are unaware of the whereabouts and use of the data generated in schools through the use of these commercial digital platforms (Jacovkis et al., 2022). On the other hand, the use of digital platforms in education is not exempt from leaving “digital traces”, which are then used by technological companies to shape the platforms themselves (Sued, 2022).