The actions of teachers at all grades are crucial for schools to become the place to prepare citizens to meet global challenges (Bourn, 2022). Specifically, the role of teachers in promoting global competence equally in all students is central (Goren and Yemini, 2019), as it is defined in Goal 4.7. of the 2030 Agenda, in which education for sustainable development and education for global citizenship are integrated to form future citizens. To this purpose, however, it is necessary to activate appropriate teacher training programs, taking into account the transformative nature of the two educations that require primarily a change in the teachers who will implement them (ASVIS, 2022, p. 16). A systematic review of the literature conducted by UNESCO identifies the main factors for the effectiveness of teacher education pathways: the organic integration of GCED and ESD; the active involvement of teachers in the recognition of global competence and its subsequent enhancement in a given context; and the use of constructivist-inspired teaching strategies that start from teachers' own conceptions and misconceptions (Bourn et al., 2017). The training course promoted by the University of Turin within the Project "Region 4.7 - Territories for Global Citizenship Education" funded under an AICS call was structured on this basis. The course involved in a research-training program 282 teachers and indirectly more than 4.000 primary (N = 1.284), secondary (N = 1.670) and high school (N = 1.323) students, on which entry and final surveys were conducted and integrated GCED and ESD interventions were activated. Teacher training entailed: a reflection on the GCED and ESD models, an analysis of students' starting level (semi-structured test administration) and effectiveness factors to be taken into account in classroom interventions. In addition, reflection focused on the stages of the process that from acquiring knowledge, cognitive skills, affective dispositions (empathy, sense of efficacy, motivation) and global citizenship values leads to activating behaviors aligned with them (PISA, 2018, Green Comp, 2022). Specific insights have been devoted to issues of migration, including in connection with climate change. This paper will present the research-training model and the components of global competence on which the surveys and interventions have focused, and will discuss the initial outcomes of the activities.

Unlike their peers of the 1980s and 1990s, who were mostly characterized by a retreat into the private sphere (Ginsborg 1998), today’s youth show their commitment through a more fluid engagement, oriented towards specific causes that are closely linked to the individual's personal interest in a particular issue or problem (Pitti 2018).

Not unlike in the past, albeit with new focuses, specific goals, and a more intersectional approach, environmental issues are attracting the largest following among the youth population. Phenomena of eco-anxiety, eco-phobia and climate depression, linked to feelings of powerlessness, are increasingly present among young people in the face of the climate crisis. Climate change is one of the key issues that, from an intergenerational justice perspective, directly affects the youngest generation: green and climate-friendly youth movements have spread around the world, driven by a shared vision of the key role that young people could play in protecting the environment (Martiskainen et al., 2020). A clear example is provided by movements such as Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion: although rather vague in terms of concrete solutions (Svensson & Wahlström 2021), for some scholars (see deMoor et al. 2021) they represent an innovative form of engagement, not only from a demographic perspective.

The dimension of young people's awareness on environmental issues will be investigated through the results of a survey conducted among secondary school students in Italy, which collected 12,658 responses. In particular, the presentation investigates the adaptability of the Sassy - Six Americas Super Short Survey, developed by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (Chryst et al. 2018), to a context such as Italy: can the proposed typology - which distinguishes unique groups that perceive and respond to global warming in different ways, from the Alarmed, who are very concerned about global warming, to the Dismissive, who do not believe the problem is real, with some intermediate positions - be applied to the analysis of the Italian youth population? In order to examine the possible adaptability of this survey (Richardson 2023), the main characteristics of students belonging to the different categories identified are highlighted, with particular attention to students' social and educational background as a possible predictor of youth commitment, given the role it can play in personal value systems.

Given the heterogeneity of the youth condition, the paper asks whether belonging to a lower social class and having followed a short-term educational path (such as vocational training) can be a constraint on young people's commitment, or whether, on the contrary, mass access to secondary education (Bourdieu 1979) has blurred these possible differences. If the forms of environmental awareness of school-age youth depend on the capital with which young people are endowed, do educational institutions encourage or repress them? The question of how class and educational background (but also gender and origin) structure youth commitment is relevant for defining the ways in which this commitment is articulated and the dimensions it addresses.

Existing economic, social and cultural changes are pushing for a new arrangement of school system and lifelong learning. The transition requires a well-structured project into two complementary areas, which support each other: an inclusive and protective dimension, which guarantees access, participation and the development of skills needed to deal with transition; the other oriented towards sustainability, focused on the education of those who, in different roles, guarantee inclusion, social justice and moral development (Boffo et al., 2023).

Schools play a key role in promoting the development of transversal competences, which are indispensable for a sustainable transition of individuals (EU, 2020). The GreenComp is the framework for lifelong learning and for the development of sustainability competence that «empowers learners to embody sustainability values, and embrace complex systems, in order to take or request action that restores and maintains ecosystem health and enhances justice, generating visions for sustainable futures» (Bianchi et al., 2022: 12).

In the context of sustainability, the Sustainable Assessment (SA) approach (Boud, Soler, 2015) is widely used in school assessment. This last, referring to more general Assessment as Learning (AaL) (Earl, 2003) focuses on the impact of evaluation processes on future reality, rather than exclusively on immediate results. It is an assessment that «meets the needs of the present and [also] prepares students to meet their own future learning needs» (Boud, 2000: 151).

Among other features, the SA promotes in learners the ability to make judgments about their own performance and that of others (meta-learning) (Boud, 2000), beyond the task to be addressed. In this perspective, the AaL and SA approaches aim at developing in students the skills of management, self-regulation and quality assessment of products and learning processes own and others, preparing them to be lifelong, life-wide and life-deep learners (EU, 1995). On this basis, in September 2023, an empirical research was started to know the opinions of future primary school teachers about school assessment, with particular reference to SA: a structured questionnaire was administered (Brown, 2006; Brown et al., 2019) to a non-probabilistic sample of third-year students of the course named ‘Modelli e strumenti per la valutazione’, as part of Science of Primary Education (LM-85bis), at the University of Salerno. This paper illustrates the descriptive analysis of data collected. What emerged from the survey has taught a training course aimed at the activation, in future teachers, of reflective thinking (Schön, 1987) and metacognitive processes (Flavell, 1977), useful to overcome misconceptions, as for example, the primacy of summative assessment over that of formative (Vannini, 2012; Brown et al., 2019), and to foster awareness on the practices of formative and sustainability assessment. Promoting awareness about the use of these evaluative practices represents an investment for the future, in terms of arrangement of the school system, able to accompany learners in the process of growth and make them responsible citizens, capable of facing the challenges of contemporary.

Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4.7 of the 2030 Agenda includes promoting quality education and lifelong learning opportunities while promoting inclusion and equity. Sustainability education is an interactional promotion process that combines skills and opportunities, allowing individuals to implement their skills by interacting significantly with the facilitating context. Law 92 of 2019 made sustainable education an integral and fundamental part of the transversal teaching of civic education, reflecting its importance.

In 2023, field research was conducted with 20 teachers from the Provincial Centers for Adult Education (CPIA) and secondary schools in Palermo, Termini Imerese and Agrigento. The objective was to identify significant aspects linked to developing environmental sustainability education practices for migrant students through the transversal teaching of civic education.

The field investigation was conducted using the phenomenological-hermeneutic research paradigm and according to the research-training methodology. The participating subjects were treated as co-researchers to improve their skills and ability to act. Starting from some fundamental aspects of educational interventions, through the curricular teaching of civic education, this report will delve into the curricular teaching of civic education. The training strategies teachers adopt to encourage students to cultivate a culture of sustainability will be explored in depth. The goal is to provide students with knowledge and skills that promote environmental sustainability. Particular attention will be paid to the inclusive potential of these schools which intend to promote educational paths aimed at Green Economy issues as the fundamental context for creating inclusive and sustainable development models to promote employability.

Intergenerational and intercultural awareness of the co-evolution and co-emergence of the living planet is essential for building a just, sustainable, and peaceful future (ICFE, 2021; Dewey, 1929; Bateson, 1972; Bearzi, 2022a). This calls for a holistic transformation of learning that addresses the cognitive, socio-emotional and behavioural domains (UNESCO, 2015). In order to make this change more radical, we need to create the conditions for a different functioning mode of the whole organism, both individual and social, that is no longer dominated by ‘intentional relationality’, based on a sense of subjective autonomy, but by ‘ecosystemic relationality’, based on a sense of interdependence (Bearzi, 2021; ICFE, 2021; Pope Francis, 2015). It is important to reconsider the transversal competencies for sustainability and global citizenship (UNESCO, 2017; UE, 2022) from this perspective (Bearzi, 2022b).

The ability of young people to challenge gerontocracy is crucial for reimagining the future (Miscioscia, 2021). Adolescents are engaged with the relational dimension of identity in the face of change, the search for one’s paths, choices, and commitment. Commitment involves choosing a direction to remain faithful to. Schools and educational contexts should provide places and structured ways of listening to young people, so that they can make their voices heard, talk about their experience of the present, and plan the vision of the future together (Zanazzi, Marescotti, 2023).

The purpose of the present paper is to showcase the efficacy of a transformative approach that utilises ethnographic tools in a synergistic and recursive manner. This is done by reviewing a series of action research processes (Michelini, 2013) undertaken by the author, who is a researcher and secondary school teacher.

Narrative learning, particularly autobiographical, can be a powerful and refreshing experience that reshapes one’s sense of self, of others, and of the ecosystem (Ricœur, 1990; Demetrio, 2017; Smorti, 2018). This is true for adults (Marescotti, 2022) and adolescents (Bearzi, 2022c). Both the writer and the reader are free to slow down and transcend the pressures of a system driven by productivity and performance. Such détournement typically occurred during the pandemic, especially during the long lockdowns (Bearzi, Rodolico, 2021). Notable results in terms of moral coherence and faithfulness to the self and the ecosystem can be found in a long-term series of autobiographical narrations by Generation Z authors (high school and university students aged 17-20) covering the period from April 2020 to January 2023 (Bearzi, Bonafede, Colazzo, in press). In a broader sense, the creative reimagination of the future takes the form of an eutopia that allows us to appreciate what is real, what is truly essential (Ricœur, 2016), with an ‘ecosystemic relationality’. Similar findings have been reported (Bearzi, 2022d; Bearzi, Tarantino, 2022; Bearzi, Usai, 2022) in the context of focus groups (Cyr, 2016, 2019; Acocella, 2008) structured as in-depth group interviews (Merton, 1987).

The combined and transformative use of these ethnographic tools serves the essential function of active listening and provides a crucial piece of the puzzle for developing articulated and flexible pathways for sustainable development and global citizenship education.