This study explores the impact of student leadership and active participation, specifically through the establishment of Student Councils, on the well-being, inclusion, and civic skills of students from primary to middle school. Drawing from real-world experiences, the research emphasizes the importance of involving students in decision-making processes from an early age as a means to cultivate responsible citizenship and contribute to a positive school environment. The research focuses on the implementation and outcomes of Student Councils in primary and middle schools, examining how these councils, mirroring micro-municipal bodies, empower students to actively engage in shaping their educational environment.

The Council of Student Representatives (CRA or CdR), comprising elected representatives from each class, serves as a platform for students to voice concerns, propose improvements, and make decisions collectively. The "Senza Zaino" method involves a more hands-on and student-centered approach to learning, where students are given more autonomy and responsibility. This method is based on the belief that students learn best when they are actively involved in their own learning and are given the opportunity to make choices about their education. One of the key findings of this study is that student leadership has a positive impact on well-being, inclusion, and civic skills. Students who are involved in student leadership are more likely to feel connected to their school, have a stronger sense of belonging, and be more engaged in their learning. They are also more likely to develop the skills they need to be active citizens, such as critical thinking, problem-solving, and communication.

The study also found that the Senza Zaino method is an effective way to promote student leadership. Students who participated in the Senza Zaino method were more likely to be involved in student leadership than students who did not participate. This suggests that the Senza Zaino method can help to create a more inclusive and supportive school environment that is more conducive to student leadership. In conclusion, this study suggests that student leadership is an important part of a holistic education and that the Senza Zaino method is an effective way to promote student leadership.

In recent years, researchers, non-governmental organisations, and policymakers in Europe have been calling for more secondary school pupils to undertake international long-term mobility, positing it as a crucial route towards strengthening their intercultural, citizenship, and work-related competences. However, at present this increase is blocked by the lack of clear EU-wide procedures for recognising learning outcomes gained from international long-term individual pupil mobility (IPM). As such, the European Commission advocates for automatic recognition: i.e. so long as there is broad equivalence between the learning outcomes of the two curricula, the outcomes from IPM in another EU country should be recognised as valid by the pupil’s home country. In most EU countries, sending school teachers are responsible for recognising learning outcomes gained via IPM. However, in practice, recognition remains rare because teachers are not adequately equipped with the tools or guidelines for facilitating the automatic recognition of the learning outcomes gained via international IPM.

This problematic gap between responsibility and practice is particularly evident in Belgium (Flanders), Estonia, and Poland: in all three countries the lack of national IPM recognition policies typically results in pupils being required to take a gap year upon returning to their home country. In order to tackle this lack of provision, the Empowering Teachers for Automatic Recognition (ETAR) project consortium trained teachers using the Training Model created by Jurczik-Arnold & Baiutti (2021). The main aim of this model is to empower school communities in their knowledge, skills, and attitudes towards assessing the transversal competences gained by pupils via long-term international IPM.

In this paper we report findings from the survey-based study using a pre/post-test design into the impact of teachers’ participation in the Training Model on their knowledge, skills, and attitudes regarding the assessment of pupils’ transversal competences developed via long-term international IPM. Three cohorts of teachers, from Poland, Belgium (Flanders), and Estonia, were recruited for the first round of training. Between November 2022 and March 2023 data were collected at two points in time: pre-test (T1, n=75), i.e. at least two weeks before the training, and post-test (T2, n=59), i.e. upon completion of the Training Model.

The results show that from pre-test to post-test the teachers significantly expanded their knowledge, skills, and attitudes towards assessing the transversal competences gained by pupils via long-term international IPM. The greatest percentage increase in the level of agreement from pre-test to post-test measured on the 5-point Likert scale was calculated for the following items: ‘knowing the priorities of European policy regarding the internationalisation of school education’ (from 41.3% to 100.0%); ‘selecting the most appropriate tools for assessing the learning outcomes gained via long-term IPM’ (from 42.7% to 91.5%); and ‘the need to assess the learning outcomes gained via long-term IPM’ (from 68.0% to 93.2%).

This paper ends by drawing from the findings to offer guidance for supporting teachers in facilitating the automatic recognition of pupils’ learning outcomes from international IPM, and suggests some onward directions for implementing the Training Model in other European contexts.

The interplay between education and democracy is widely acknowledged as a pivotal cornerstone in addressing the pervasive challenges of late-modern societies (Dewey, 1916; Apple et al., 2022). With the global upsurge of crises and inequalities (Piketty, 2020), educational systems are tasked with the crucial responsibility of equipping students to navigate planetary and complex dilemmas (Andreotti et al., 2012; OXFAM, 2006; CoE, 2020). Indeed, as recently advocated by the Council of Europe (CoE, 2018), educational institutions should not just impart knowledge, but also cultivate democratic culture and intercultural understanding among students to shape socially and civically engaged subjects (Barrett, 2018).
Within this framework, our contribution aims to elucidate the potential of individual international pupil mobility experiences in promoting citizenship education and fostering awareness of social justice. Drawing from a section of the research “Civic Education and International Pupil Mobility” carried out in Italy by Fondazione Intercultura and Associazione “Per Scuola Democratica” in 2022, our study delves into the didactic and organizational modalities that facilitate the development of citizenship competence through international pupil mobility. In particular, the proposal aims to formulate a methodological model through which educational institutions can develop civic education pathways that are built upon and can enhance international mobility experiences, foster the construction of global citizenship, and cultivate intercultural competence for all students.
The research design involved interviews with headteachers (N=11) and experts (N=10), as well as focus groups (N=4) with teachers from selected high schools in Northern, Central, and Southern Italy identified for their significant experience in international mobility and/or the promotion of civic and citizenship education at the school level. The objectives of the interviews and focus groups encompassed four key dimensions: (1) comprehending how civic education is implemented; (2) understanding how the international dimension of civic education is conceived; (3) analyzing the organization and management of students’ mobility experiences; and (4) investigating how the return from mobility is structured, in terms of procedures and valorization of the experience.
The research results highlight a weak connection between the international mobility of individual students and the delivery of civic education in Italian upper secondary schools participating in the project. The institutions frame students’ international mobility as a merely “private” experience, confined to the individual student (and their families) and with little impact on the whole school, as students who do not take part in the mobility are only marginally engaged in the international experience carried out by those who went abroad. Classes are generally excluded from any analysis, discussion, or reflection effort on the differences and/or similarities between the Italian context and that of other countries. Overall, the results of the study emphasize the absence of structured learning paths that connect international mobility experiences with civic and citizenship education, involving the whole class or school.
The last section of our contribution will provide actionable insights for educators and policymakers seeking to leverage international mobility experiences and citizenship education as tools for social justice.

Education for democracy and citizenship (EDC), its formal and informal status, and its social function have been pivotal in various eras, mainly since the establishment of democracy in Europe. In each one and in every political, social, and economic context, the EDC’s primary aim has always been to educate everyone to active and responsible participation in democratic processes for the benefit of the community. Changing or being specific to different historical moments rather than to specific cultural contexts may be the key values to be educated, the reference models, and the pedagogical-didactic methods implemented (Nuzzaci, 2023).

International institutions regularly publish guidelines and tools to promote a shared denominator to which refer or compare at national or sub-national level. For this reason, within EDC’s context, the Council of Europe (2022) fostered the Framework of Competencies for a Culture of Democracy (RFCDC). It consists of a synthesis of almost a hundred international models, and its value lies in its employability in different educational contexts (formal, non-formal, and informal), with people of all ages, and starting from different conceptions of democracy. For teachers-in-training drawing on these conceptions is crucial to encourage individual and collective engagement in the challenges (Shaffer et al., 2017) that society faces democratically.

This paper presents the results of an exploratory study aimed at investigating EDC training provision at a Faculty of Education in Switzerland. The study analyses the trainers' conceptions of democracy (Gandin & Apple, 2002) and maps the activities, contents, and teaching approaches used to promote the democratic competencies of teachers in training. The research, which will end in April 2024, is conducted with a mixed-method approach: the first “desk research” phase envisages a mapping of the training provided on EDC and a comparison of national and international transversal competence models with the RFCDC to highlight their differences and similarities; the second one, the administration of an ad hoc questionnaire aimed at surveying the teaching and learning activities, promoted by trainers, carried out within EDC context; the last one, a qualitative in-depth analysis of the questionnaire data through semi-structured interviews, conducted among a non-probabilistic sample of volunteers.

The results of the first analyses show, on the one hand, a significant overlap between the RFCDC and the main reference models of transversal competencies, and on the other hand, the presence of a "hidden curriculum" that already provides for the teaching/learning of certain democratic competences, without, however, explicitly declaring it in the curricula. These findings highlight a lack of awareness among academics/teachers concerning what is already being done in EDC. This, therefore, leads to reflection on the potential of transversal competencies and RFCDC in fostering a culture of multicultural democratic citizenship (Szelényi & Rhoads, 2007) and on the need to find strategies to explicitly promote democratic competencies in curricula and classroom activities (Mompoint-Gaillard & Lázár, 2015). This would make it possible to actively respond to a need recognized by both the leading international educational organizations (Hoskins et al., 2014) and by Swiss political and educational institutions (Zamora et al., 2020).

The international literature on the internationalisation of school education is markedly limited and fragmented. This gap is particularly noticeable when considering the complex dynamics of pupil mobility and its implications for educational systems. In response to this gap, Fondazione Intercultura, a non-profit organisation in Italy, has spearheaded significant academic inquiries into the subject. It has also established the Italian Observatory on the Internationalisation of Schools and Pupil Mobility, placing Italy at the forefront of research in this field. This presentation will delve into the Observatory (2023)'s latest survey findings , which indicate a notable increase in the level of internationalisation of Italian secondary school education over the last fifteen years. This reveals that activities and practices promoting an international, intercultural, or global dimension are increasingly prevalent in Italian schools. Subsequently, drawing on a literature review of the internationalisation of higher education, the presentation proposes a comprehensive working definition and framework for the internationalisation of school education (Baiutti, 2019). This framework aims to capture the essence of internationalisation within the school context, encompassing the activity linked to “internationalisation at home” and “internationalisation abroad”. Finally, the presentation seeks to establish a conceptual bridge between the internationalisation of school education and the civic and citizenship education. It suggests that fostering internationalisation in schools can enhance students' intercultural dimension of the democratic competence. This competence is crucial for promoting pupils' civic participation (Council of Europe, 2018; Barrett, 2018). This presentation not only contributes to the academic discourse but also offers insights for policymakers and educators aiming to navigate the complexities of internationalising school education.