In recent years, debates about the future of school and of schooling have increasingly populated the educational discourse (Facer 2021). While the future can be addressed through diverse epistemological and ontological approaches, one important aspect of this debate revolves around the possibility of (more or less) radical transformations of the current ‘forme scolaire’, i.e., the set of protocols, materialities and devices (roles, spaces, times, curricula, body disciplines, forms of assessment, etc.) that help define educational institutions and their form (Maulini and Perrenoud, 2005). Many international organizations, such as UNESCO and OECD have approached this issue by developing conceptualizations and scenarios about the future of education, portraying different possible paths. However, these scenarios are often based on normative ‘top-down’ definitions, not intercepting the voice of educational actors ‘from below’. Moreover, these conceptualizations don’t really consider territorial differences (e.g., rural vs. urban schools), nor specific school settings, such as Small schools.

By drawing on the current interest about ‘the future’ in sociology (e.g., Levitas 2013; Poli 2017) and on an ongoing investigation in small Italian schools resulting from a collaboration between INDIRE and CNR-IRPPS, in this paper, we are interested in discussing educational futures (and futures in education) of small and rural schools. We intend to do so by exploring one of the future-school scenarios proposed by OECD, “School as a learning Hub”, where future schools will retain most of their current functions, but “Opening the ‘school walls’ connects schools to their communities, favouring ever-changing forms of learning, civic engagement and social innovation.” (OECD, 2020). Basing on the experiences of three Small Schools selected in Italy, the research here presented aims to empirically map the practices, experiences and organisational processes that can be approached to the concept of ‘school as a learning hub’ and to intercept their local translations, possibly enriching the concept ‘from below’. In a perspective of collaboration with schools and with the actors of the educational community, a participatory-inventive pilot research protocol is carried out, in which research activities (interviews, observations and focus groups) alternate with inventive educational activities. The small schools included are invited to think, narrate, and rethink themselves, using the school as a learning hub scenario as a guideline. Through a phase of inventive-participatory research (Giorgi et al., 2021) focused on the development of video stories, schools are then involved in a reflective processes of self-narration oriented to their definition and experiences of the concept of School as a Learning Hub and to their idea of possible future(s).

Through the data gathered, we intend to describe the different forms of futures at stake and to illustrate how schools live in multiple temporalities that escape the simple and dominant linear past-present-future logic. Moreover, we want to illustrate how methods matter in studying educational futures, where deterministic and positivist orientations risk limiting the mapping of future-making activities. Thus, engaging in new methods may enable the voices of small schools to be de-marginalized and considered in the public debate.

Cultural Framework

How will the future of schools look like?

The OECD (2020) has identified the school scenario as a learning hub as one of the possible forms of the school for the near future. UNESCO calls upon actors within the educational system to frame «education as a common good» (2022, p. VII). INDIRE within the National Movement of Small and Rural Schools identified the educational experiences proposed by Small and Rural Schools as examples of open schools able at offering educational and community service activities through formalized alliances (educational pacts) (Mangione e Cannella, 2021; Chipa et al., 2022).

By drawing on the current interest about ‘the future’ in sociology (Levitas 2013; Poli 2017) INDIRE and IRPPS-CNR started in 2023 a research study to identify in the context of Italian Small and Rural schools the characterizations of the learning hub proposed by the OECD that can be applied also at the context of standard schools.

The following research questions guided the research:

RQ1: Are there examples of small and rural schools that can be considered as learning hubs?

RQ2: To what extent can the experiences of small schools help to imagine the future of schools, i.e. the redesigning and re-proposition of a new grammar of school?

Method

A research-intervention process based on multiple case study has been set up. The research protocol included an exploratory phase with the sending of the questionnaire to all school registered (560) with the Movement. The cases were identified by selecting educational experiences focused on three aspects: (1) educational activities carried out outside the school building; (2) community services the school offers in response to local needs; (3) the presence of the educational pacts.

The three identified cases (North, Centre and the South of Italy) were analysed through a set of dimensions characterizing the Learning Hub scenario derived from OECD's reflection: (1) Open learning environments; (2) Multiagency partnership; (3) Emerging curriculum; (4) Professional development for teachers; (5) Community services; (6) Tools and levels of governance.

The research protocol is based on inventive methods (Lury, Wakefor, 2023; Giorgi et al., 2021) and imagination laboratories with school leaders, teachers, students, families, local authorities and stakeholders. Inventive methods and specific identified tools (focus groups, interviews, video storytelling) were chosen with the purpose of: (1) identifying the definitions of school as a learning hub; (3) mapping the educational activities and experiences that connect school and territory; (2) promote among the actors of the educational community the generation of ideas on the image and characteristics of the school of the future.

Outcomes

The creative-participatory research phase centered on the production of video-narratives stimulated processes of self-narration and self-reflection towards a bottom-up definition of the concept of School as a Learning Hub. Analysis of the video-narratives will identify possible scenarios for applying this concept of schools, localizing experiences nationwide and in the context of small schools. The research will identify the recurring dimensions (grammar) of the school as a learning hub and educational approaches for developing this vision.

In this paper, I will address the issue of the future of small and rural schools (SRS henceforth) from an educational-theoretical perspective. In particular, the thesis that I am going to explore is whether and to what extent SRSs may represent a model to oppose to what has been recently defined as “product-orientated education” and whether they may embody “an alternative vision incorporating sufficiency, homonomy and emancipation” (Barrow, 2024).

My argumentation will unfold in two steps. First, I will suggest understanding the typically modern view of the future of/in education at the crossroads of three interpretive trajectories: Klaus Mollenhauer’s (1986) concept of Bildungszeit as dominated by the logic of progress; Thomas Popkewitz’s (2008) notion of cosmopolitan time; and Robbie McClintock’s (2012) idea of modern schooling as ruled by the “area-mapping” mindset. The educational temporality that thereby emerges arguably finds its contemporary expression in the aforementioned product-orientated education, which frames the future in terms of “expected outcomes" and, more generally, according to principles of manageability.

And, secondly, in the more constructive (or simply visionary?) part of the paper, I am going to intimate that SRSs could (or even should) be construed as the chronotope of education taking place and of studenting. Through the phrase “taking place,” which I draw from McClintock, I want to convey a double meaning: on the one hand, the idea of a temporality intimately linked with a sense of place and with that philochoria which Noddings (2013, p. 85) recommends in contemporary scenarios; and, on the other, an existential and lived sense of educational temporality that the project of modern schooling tends to sidestep or repress. In this wake, I will indicate the possibility that SRSs may represent privileged sites of that interweaving of existential and place-based education that Giles Barrow recommends in opposition to product-orientated schooling.

In this reading, we should recoil from construing SRSs as learning hubs but we should rather re-conceptualize them as sites for studying and studenting, insofar as the very notion of learning is arguably accomplice with a specific view of temporality.

In conclusion, redescribing place in the Latourian terms of “a collective in the process of expanding”, I will raise the question of whether, in their configuration as sites of studying and studenting, SRSs may represent, in a Deweyan vein, the contemporary outposts of creative democracy, which is always a “task ahead of us”.

Small and Rural Schools (SRS) are a key component of the Italian school system. According to INDIRE they are 33,1% of all pre-, primary and lower secondary schools. Presence of schools in remote and marginalised territories has a strong effect on social cohesion and depopulation. SRS usually have tighter connections with their communities, both because they need support to provide quality service and because the small size allows for personal connections built through multiple venues of encounter. SRS can explore the concepts of Education Outside the Classroom (EOtC) and Open School at a deeper and more immediate level. The smaller size implies proximity between inside and outside, an osmotic skin that has to be planned and organised in a larger context. In SRS standard curriculum is often naturally enriched by the local curriculum, creating great opportunities for meaningful learning based on authentic tasks, socio-emotional connections and familiar learning situations. A natural development is moving from research carried out by the school on its surroundings, to research co-conducted by the school with part of the communities, to community involvement as co-responsible in the educational process. The process can change both school and community.

Relationships among students, teachers, principals and different actors have a strategic importance in developing school projects and creating an educational community. The concept of socio-educational ecosystem can guide us in identifying current and future networks at school disposal.

This ongoing research analyses the socio-educational network surrounding the Istituto Comprensivo “G. Gregori”, municipalities of Casina and Carpineti, located in the mountain area of Reggio Emilia province. The IC encompasses 4 pre-primary and 2 primary schools with multi-age classrooms, that follow into Indire Small School definition; 2 border line primary schools and 2 low secondary schools, that are located into the main towns.

The study focuses on primary and lower secondary schools and investigates the connections, established in the post-pandemic period, between each school and social service, educational and cultural associations, municipalities, and private citizens. A desk research based on the institute official reports and on school projects creates a preliminary vision of the socio-educational community.

Using an interactive participatory approach school staff and leaderships together with researchers design each school specific mesogram and the one that encompass the whole institution. During the sessions the staff from the same building together with researchers reflect on the type and quality of the connections with the territories. The researchers facilitate the discussion also referring to the overall vision gained through the desk research. A further purpose is to focus on connections that could be strengthen or newly forged in order to orient school future choices. The comparison between different schools’ mesogram, even within the same overall institution could shade light on the different socio-educational ecosystem and support collective improvements and developments.

A possible explanation for these differences could also be traced in specific teachers’ sense of self efficacy and of agency, captured through a survey. Confirmation of this hypothesis could orient the school inclusive pedagogical leadership.

The Covid-19 pandemic and the educational policies of recent years have contributed to an increase in the number of hours that children spend within the walls of educational institutions, highlighting the potential harm of childhood spent in places that make it difficult to have outdoor experiences, opportunities to meet and relate to people, animals, plants, natural and cultural phenomena, and to interact, communicate and act with the community of the territory (Gruenewald & Smith, 2008). This proposal presents the results of a qualitative empirical research study involving a small mountain school located in a border area and expressing its organisational and pedagogical principles in the management of a school cooperative association. The aim of the research was to describe how children, teachers, parents and stakeholders in the area deal with issues of social and environmental sustainability when involved in activities and projects in and with the community, and how they act to promote an inclusive and democratic community.

The framework from which the research originated refers to community pedagogy (Tramma, 2009; Shannon & Galle, 2017) and pedagogical approaches that promote community experiences by rethinking the relationships between in-school and out-of-school in a dimension of innovation and, in particular, place pedagogy. The empirical material considered and analysed consists, on the one hand, of phenomenological vignettes (Ammann et al., 2017) and, on the other hand, of ethnographic observations (Charmaz & Mitchell, 2014). The results describe a new educational landscape in which a small school that knows how to open up to the surrounding community and other partners can establish a fruitful relationship with the children's living environment and “find a way to expand its social space” (Böhnisch, 2002, p. 118). Daily pedagogical practice begins at the heart of the school, in the school cooperative, and expands into active exploration of the world, while remaining ready to return to the classroom for reflection, redesign and transformation of practices and places of learning.