The contribution proposes a methodological reflection on queer pedagogy (Bryson, de Castell, 1993; Mayo, Rodriguez, 2019; Gonzales et al., 2019), as developed through the ten-year experience of the Scosse association, of which we are researchers and trainers in gender education. The contribution reflects on how a queer and intersectional perspective can shape educational and training interventions in practice.

Queer theory represents a critique of the norms regulating categories of gender, identity and expression, and sexual orientations, interpreting gender as a discursive social construction which is reproduced through social interactions (Butler, 1990; Sedgwick, 1990; Wilchins, 2014). This way ensures that the cis-heteronormative paradigm perpetuates and self-feeds.

Among the theoretical knots examined: the problematization of the relationships between sex, gender, and sexuality and the "de-essentialization" of sexual and gender identity categories; the deconstruction of stereotypes and roles, transmitted in embodied educational relationships, and the contingent and provisional reading of identity categories; the rethinking of boundaries between center and margins, legitimate and illegitimate, "normal" and "anomalous"; the rejection for the classification of people into universal binary cages; the perception of being epistemologically imperfect and contradictory.

Over the years, we have developed, once again preferring reading and analysing illustrated books and paying attention to visual languages (Fierli, Franchi, Marini, 2019), paths and tools that do not offer an explicit thematic deepening with regard to gender (Fierli et alii, 2020), but rather opportunities to practice the gaze in a dynamic way. This is what happens in the works of the American artist Tana Hoban, who uses photographic language to offer opportunities for re-semantization; or in those of the Canadian Keri Smith, who, starting from aspects dear to her such as re-functionalization, positioning, the open work, suggests stripping what is familiar of its apparent obviousness, or exploiting what appears different from expectations to question what we see or thought we knew (2011). Opportunities for shifting perspectives are also offered by the imagier of the French artist Katy Couprie, or prepared by polyphonic narratives such as the splendid Voci nel parco by Anthony Browne (2017), a title that, like few others, has the ability to illuminate the axes of an intersectional perspective, making them vibrate in narrative tension. The reading of different picturebooks , with and without words, aimed at very different or transversal age groups, allows criticizing identity categories, attribution processes, and the impact of labels on people. The centrality of the visual component in the proposed paths shows the formative and deconstructive value of presenting a plurality of artistic techniques, illustrative styles, and uses of colour, able to show contrasts and consonances with the perceptual level, to dismantle the assumption of objectivity.

Do picturebooks, used as mediating tools in educational practices, have the capacity to help build open and free imagery? And does educational practices, in the areas of identities, sexualities, growing bodies, have the capacity to listen to needs and ideas coming from little and adolescents persons?

The manuals on the changing body, which still segregate by gender, reinforcing a binary and hierarchical view of the world; the books on reproduction that propose motherhood as an unavoidable choice and only destiny; the white, healthy, able-bodied, and prosperous bodies that crowd the representations, how much do they contribute to change in and out of school and how much, instead, do they reinforce a deeply hegemonic, patriarchal, violent idea of relationships?

Is publishing for children and adolescents, the independent and militant kind that offers quality books, ignites curiosity and opens horizons, always brave and in step with the times?

How many (and which) taboos still persist in books that tell us about bodies, sexualities, identities and gender? (Brugeilles et al., 2002; Oltra-Albiach, Pardo, 2019; Blakemore et al., 2009; Allan, 2012; Fierli et al. 2020a) Are they powerful tools for change and transformation or do they eternalize (Turin, 2003) stereotypes and prejudices and perpetrate the reproduction of the cisheteronormative paradigm?

Hardly the reflection on the body is encouraged and fostered by adult reference persons, rarely it turns into an analysis referred to pleasure, emotions, sexuality, and is open to a gendered perspective that does not offer a merely binary and essentialist, sanitizing and reproductive view (Coats, 2018; Zanfabro, 2017; Fierli et al., 2020b).

With this contribution we present the research and reflection from the project Fammi capire. La rappresentazione dei corpi, dei generi e delle sessualità nei libri illustrati 0-18 anni (Let Me Understand. The Representation of Bodies, Genders and Sexualities in Picturebooks 0-18 Years), on books and picturebooks that explore different possibilities and visions. Born in 2016 from an idea of Scosse, Ottimomassimo Libreria and Maddalena Lucarelli, the project includes a itinerant bibliographic exhibition, in which some unobtainable classics stand out together with interesting new proposals from Italian and foreign publishing, selected thinking about the possibility of using them as tools of free knowledge and education starting from bodies. The research developed as an asystematic and at the same time articulate and reasoned reconnaissance of the existing, aimed at responding to professional needs and emerging questions. From being necessary and urgent, it has gradually assumed a systematic nature that over time has produced: several bibliographies devoted to specific thematic insights; transdiscplinary comparisons with other outlooks and other professionalism; the identification of different approaches present in this publishing field; and continuous stirrings of reflexivity that have led to revisions over time of selection and cataloguing criteria and research questions.

PCTOs (Pathways for Transversal Competencies and Orientation) in the Italian education system represent a strategic methodology for the global development of upper secondary school students and the orientation of their educational and professional choices (Keeley, 2007; Vitale, 2016). The project here presented, which is funded with PRIN 2022 funds, aims to analyze the characteristics of PCTOs and evaluate their influence on personal resources, as well as student dispersion and orientation measures. The project consists of three studies. The first study aims to explore if and how the implementation and objectives of PCTOs are described in the Three-Year Training Offer Plans (PTOF) of 200 institutes randomly selected at the national level. This study will highlight any variations and adherence to ministerial standards through a document analysis (Bianquin et al., 2018; Bolasco, 2021). The second study includes conducting six case studies involving 6 secondary schools, two for each region involved (Lazio, Lombardy, and Emilia-Romagna). This phase aims to collect data at different levels, including institute, teachers, and students, through the Training Research methodology (Asquini, 2018), to understand the factors that hinder and facilitate the planning of PCTOs and their effects on students' educational and professional development choices. The third study involves conducting a retrospective survey among first-year university students to evaluate the impact of PCTOs on their career choices and individual well-being. The project aims to create an open-access digital platform for schools to self-evaluate and improve the effectiveness of PCTOs. The theoretical-cognitive, educational, and technological implications of the project will contribute to informing educational policies and improving school practices, promoting continuous evaluation and an improvement cycle to raise the overall quality of educational paths.

This contribution aims to elucidate the stages and objectives of the research project in detail, seeking to share the methodologies and objectives with the scientific community, thereby facilitating collaboration, discussion, and the exchange of knowledge within the field.

Aim of this paper is to discuss the national guidelines Che fare?/What to do? launched in September 2023 by Educare alle Differenze1, the Italian network of NGO’s that promotes gender and queer pedagogies to tackle sterotypes and discrimination since 2014.

In order to write these guidelines, between spring 2022 and summer 2023 we involved, through a participatory process, a multiplicity of actors living in school and educational contexts: teachers and principals of schools of all degrees, experts* in gender and sexuality studies, LGBTQI+ activists*, feminists, social workers in feminist shelters against gender-based violence, as well as a group of secondary school students. We asked them to explore together how, in their daily experience at school, gender-based violence takes shape, what counteracting actions were already implemented in their school contexts (if any), and what, on the other hand, was still lacking. Drawing upon this material and through a further participatory workshop during the 8th edition of the Educare alle differenze festival held in Pescara in 2022, we elaborate this set of guidelines.

Cha fare? offers a set of tools for high school contexts aimed at challenging gender-based violence in its various forms and outcomes -male violence against women, homolesbobitransphobic violence, and gender normativity - from an intersectional theoretical and educational framework. In fact, we share an understanding of the common heteropatriarchal and cisnormative ground of all gender-based violence that claim for both an holistic understanding and the development of violence-specific strategies of intervention.

Che fare? is a tool aimed at providing teachers with theoretical and practical keys to deal with concrete situations of violence that may occur at school, particularly in secondary and high school. The text is divided into three sections, each of which attends to a specific declination of gender-based violence. In each section we have identified a set of indicators to look out for, in order to recognize violence when encountered at school. The guidelines also provide relational skills aimed at practicing listening, consent and acceptance. Eventually, they highlight what is important to do, and to do not, in order to effectively deal with such situations both at the individual, collegial and institutional level.