According to the UNESCO “new social contract for education” pedagogy should be organized around the principles of cooperation, collaboration, and solidarity (UNESCO 2021). Understanding and experiencing these principles is possible through collaborative actions undertaken by diverse groups of local stakeholders (citizens, teachers, students, academics) and institutions (local governments, schools, and universities).

The sense of solidarity among communities, including the local and university ones, stems from the commitment to solving everyday problems of local, social life. More of them are often related to excluded groups, social inclusion and diversity (Nizińska, Kurantowicz 2019). What is important for lifelong education is also the development of civic attitudes in solidarity with minority groups, and at the same time building a sense of belonging to the community and place of all citizens. Strong local identities are based on partnerships, social and cultural capital of the local space (Cook, Nation 2016).

The aim of our presentation is to show how cooperation between the local community and the university is understood, what forms it takes, who and what values it can serve. What are the benefits of university and community collaboration/partnerships, what are the barriers to this cooperation, and how to overcome them. The results of research and case studies from two international European projects (EUCUL 2017 - 2020, ESDEUS 2023 - 2025 Cooperation Partnerships for Higher Education Erasmus+ Programme) will be the basis for formulating conclusions and recommendations in this area. We want to share the results of the research especially on inspiring heritage practices when implemented by adult educators, significantly change or can change the present real life of local communities by using heritage to social inclusion, working with communities with difficult, hidden or “manored” heritage (Kurantowicz 2024).

In its global report published in 2021, the UNESCO International Commission on the Futures of Education invited the international community to forge a “new social contract for education” in order to heal past injustices and build a more equitable and sustainable planet. This new social contract should involve all education stakeholders, with the aim of defining how the education system should be organised and for what purpose, and be governed by two basic principles, namely assuring the right to quality education throughout life and strengthening education as a public endeavour and a common good (UNESCO, 2021). According to the vision outlined in the Futures of Education report, the idea of a new social contract for education reflects the many examples of cooperation among communities and education systems around the world. In Italy, these experiences, commonly referred to as Community or Territorial Educational Pacts, have gained increasing attention in recent years and have been seen as a potential response to the challenges affecting the Italian education system characterized by rising inequality and increasing levels of educational poverty.

This paper examines the principle of education as a common good as the political framing for the new social contract for education. Indeed, the transition from the concept of public good to that of common good, as already set out by UNESCO since the publication of the Rethinking Education: Towards a global common good? report in 2015, reflects the evolving role of the State and implies a changing relationship among the actors involved in the social contract. This perspective is grounded on a strong sense of solidarity among the different components of society and translates into organisational structures which highlight inclusion and cooperation at different levels giving voice to and acknowledging diverse knowledge systems. As such, the concept of education as a common good represents an alternative framework for the governance of education that supports democratic participation and a humanistic approach while countering more individualistic and utilitarian approaches that have been spreading in the sector.

The second part of this paper reviews the experience of school-community alliances in Italy, commonly referred to as ‘Community Educational Pacts’, which make it possible to ensure the effective participation of the various actors and agencies which are part of the education community and to increase the availability of resources in a given context. The paper retraces the origins of these experiences and recalls the more recent education policies that have promoted the development of these tools, based on principles of subsidiarity and co-responsibility. Based on preliminary studies carried out by the National Institute for Documentation, Innovation and Educational Research and by the Forum on Inequality and Diversity, it provides an overview of the characteristics of these initiatives and ultimately discusses the extent to which they can represent concrete opportunities for reimagining the new social contract for education grounded on the concept of education as a common good.

Cultural Framework

In “Futures of Education” (2021) UNESCO, identified the basis of a new social contract for education based on reciprocity and solidarity. In Italy, this contract commonly referred to as “Territorial education Pacts” (Chipa et al., 2023), instruments to establish proximity alliances between the school and its community (Toukan, 2023). The alliances between school and territory are “privileged” mechanisms to address social and educational fragility and inequalities (Nast and Blokland, 2013; Valli et al., 2018) and can be attributed to different cultural construct (Bartolini et al., 2022). INDIRE, through the realization of the National Observatory on Educational Pacts, has been analyzing this strategic tool for over a year and promotes training paths to support schools and communities in the phase of co-design and realization of lasting and sustainable alliances over time.

Objective and Metodology

The need to investigate and describe the proximity alliances built through Educational Pacts led the INDIRE research group to identify a pilot context and define an interpretive qualitative research path aimed at understanding the forms that the pacts take in the territories. In a first phase, the researchers prepared a project format of the Pact to be compiled by the involved school realities: 12 Comprehensive Institutes, 80 teachers, and 12 school managers have benefited from a training course as a guide to the drafting of Pacts for proximity alliances. The collected data are subjected to content analysis, identifying a series of essential categories for the constitution of the pacts: educational visions of a community ecosystem (Teneggi, 2020); needs and objectives that the pact aims to satisfy; actors and roles within the pacts with attention to the multiagency provided by the alliance (Cannella e Mangione, 2023); types of educational spaces used (classrooms extended to the territory, unconventional indoor and outdoor spaces, etc.) and teaching situations provided therein.

Subsequently, to the drafting and sharing of the Pacts, it is proposed to the schools and the staff in training the monthly compilation of a documentation notebook (logbook) to return the experiences put into practice. The logbooks are analyzed through a coding process based on categories considered as priorities for the territory: students who participate in the expansion of training activities; families who participate in training activities; opening of schools in the afternoon; spaces used in the afternoon.

The further development of categories and subcategories is developed deductively, selecting in the texts significant units of description (Mortari, 2010): the resulting system of categories and subcategories is a codebook that guides the reading of the texts. For content analysis, the QCAmap software will be used, an open-access web application based on content analysis techniques (Mayring, 2022).

Results

The interpretive research on the pilot case will not only allow validating an “experimental model” of a community educational pact to be promoted on a large scale through coordinated training and informatiton actions within the National Observatory on Educational Pacts but also dialogue with UNESCO proposing the ways in which Italy is able to realize forms of social educational contract.

In recent years, two influential UNESCO’s documents have had a major impact on educational policies and practices, namely Reimagining our Futures Together: a new social contract for education (UNESCO, 2021) and the updated 1974 Recommendation on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Sustainable Development (UNESCO, 2023).

Within these documents emerges the transformative approach of Global Citizenship Education (GCED), regarded as a transversal educational perspective that can raise awareness on the issues included in Target 4.7 of the Sustainable Development Goals and, more broadly, on all the goals of the 2030 Agenda. In this paper, the role of GCED within these documents will be developed as follows: after highlighting how this disputed educational approach is conceptualised by the academic community, how GCED can contribute to re-imagining in what way education can shape the futures as advocated by the Report will be discussed. This role also emerges from the revised 1974 Recommendation, admittedly inspired by the Report, in which the original will be compared with the revised version to show how GCED has become a key issue. Finally, in rethinking the futures of education, the salience of hope is evident, given its transformational role, thereby rendering it pivotal in the discourse on GCED (Bourn & Tarozzi. 2023). The transformative role of hope is embedded in GCED's vision of the future, which can be seen as an organizing principle for rethinking the curriculum across diverse education settings.

GCED is an ill-defined concept (Davies, 2006). Still, a consistent amount of literature is trying to conceptualise this widely acknowledged notion in education policy and practice as well as in academic research, which is also championed by UNESCO (Bourn, 2021; Davies et al., 2018).

Unlike earlier Faure and Delors reports, where education was aimed at developing skills to support national citizenship, a global perspective informs the 2021 UNESCO report, where the idea of social contract that emerges from the UNESCO narrative is closer to a political device ensuring social justice. It therefore entails a broader vision of citizenship, expanding the sense of belonging beyond national borders, calling for the active participation of citizens and civil society in redefining the public purposes of education as a common good.

Therefore, a global social justice education (Tarozzi, 2021) seems to respond to this need, being an educational approach framing the idea of interdependence and integration between the social and the natural sphere.

The revised 1974 Recommendation also claims that to create peaceful, just and sustainable futures, education should be reformed and embrace a global perspective, as also indicated in the new title adopted at UNESCO’s intergovernmental meeting in November 2023:

Recommendation on Education for Peace and Human Rights, International Understanding, Cooperation, Fundamental Freedoms, Global Citizenship and Sustainable Development.

In pedagogical terms, the construction of the future requires a pedagogy of hope (Freire, 2021), empowering students to imagine possible futures and build them.

In the context of persistent educational inequalities challenges in Italy, this contribution delves into the transformative potential of educational alliances within the framework of the whole school approach, as stated by UNESCO in its Futures of Education report[1].

Italy's struggle against educational inequalities is evident in statistics indicating an 8.7% national average of implicit early school leaving, with notable peaks in regions such as Campania, Sardinia, Sicily, and Calabria (19.8%, 18.7%, 16%, and 18%, respectively)[2]. This challenge is exacerbated for students from low socio-economic backgrounds, resulting in a more than doubled school leaving rate. Additionally, over 14% of children and adolescents currently live in poverty[3]. A negative scenario, that hides a progressive decline in the psycho-physical well-being of minors[4] and the persisting problem of intergenerational transmission process of inequalities, determined by multi-dimensional nature that incorporates factors as gender, age, origin, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, class, and religion[5].

While focusing on a community educational pact, the contribution proposes an integrated and co-designed approach and process that involve both schools and local stakeholders and will outline evidence, challenges, and solutions based on practical experiences from suburbs in Milan and Reggio Calabria[6]. We will highlight how such alliances can broaden the educational dimension and enhance child and youth participation, with special focus to the empowerment of vulnerable groups.

ActionAid proposes that the formalized commitment, as for shared administration, is pivotal for building a collective and integrated vision on local policies aimed at addressing educational inequalities. This commitment, involving a diverse range of stakeholders, is envisioned to guide a more integrated utilization of public and private funds, fostering a responsible and needs-driven allocation to benefit minors. This represents a long-term vision wherein stakeholders take increased responsibility for the rights of minor citizens, while simultaneously reinforcing the constitutional role of schools.

The contribution provides insights into challenges related to renewed school[7] and territorial governance[8], with a special focus on student participation[9]. It underscores the necessity of a public local policy to sustain the educational alliance[10] and emphasizes the required flexibility to adapt to specific vulnerabilities. Additionally, the contribution highlights the need for promoting empowering initiatives tailored to each stakeholder, ensuring the effectiveness of the alliance.