This paper addresses adultcentrism in education by weaving together a critical theoretical framework, contemporary pedagogical contributions, and an empirical case study situated within an Italian public Montessori primary school. Adultcentrism – understood as the structural and symbolic primacy of adult perspectives, norms, and power in shaping children’s lives – continues to permeate formal schooling, often legitimising asymmetrical authority and limiting children’s agency. Closely intertwined with this is the legacy of “black pedagogy,” theorised by Katharina Rutschky (2015/1977) and further elaborated by Alice Miller (2007a/1979; 2007b/1980), which exposes authoritarian, disciplinary, and moralising practices embedded in educational traditions. Although often subtle in contemporary schooling, these dynamics persist through evaluation regimes, behavioural control, and “epistemic injustice” that privilege adult power over children’s lived experience.
Building on the childist and anti-adultist approach and its most recent contributions (Biswas at al., 2024; Liebel and Meade, 2025; Tripi, 2025), the paper highlights pedagogical “counter-movements” capable of challenging adultcentrism within school institutions. Childism emphasises children’s protagonism, intergenerational dialogue, and institutional reflexivity as key strategies to unsettle adult monopolies of interpretation and decision-making. Overcoming implicit power dynamics in schooling requires not merely methodological adjustments but a transformation of educational stance: practices such as shared rule-making, negotiated curricula, participatory assessment, and the cultivation of aesthetic and expressive spaces emerge as concrete modalities for redistributing power and recognising children as epistemic subjects.
In this context, the professional experience of Pia Burei Bozzini (1939–2024), a primary school teacher, trainer at the Opera Nazionale Montessori and expert practicienne trained in close collaboration with Arno Stern, represents a significant example of how methodological contaminations can generate original and authentic educational practices, rooted in the professional biography of the educator. The case exemplifies a response to the need to unsettle sedimented educational hierarchies and to reconfigure entrenched adult–child power relations within the school context.
The Closlieu, a dispositif conceived by Stern (Stern, 1959/1966) as a necessary alternative to school-based art education, is grounded in safeguarding the “Play of painting” (Stern, 2011/2013) within a protected, structured space removed from judgment, evaluation, and interpretation. The introduction of this expressive setting into the Montessori primary school “Balilla Paganelli” in Cinisello Balsamo (MI) constitutes a consciously non-orthodox choice with respect to both pedagogical approaches, motivated by the belief in a meaningful connection between them. On the one hand, Montessori education already challenges adultcentrism through prepared environments, auto-education, and respect for the child’s rhythm. On the other hand, the Closlieu radicalises this stance by suspending curricular intentionality altogether, offering an experience where expression is decoupled from performance and assessment. Within the institutional setting, this dispositif functions as a micro-political space that interrupts dominant logics of productivity and normalisation, allowing children to inhabit school differently.
The paper argues that overcoming adultcentrism requires creating “protected heterotopias” within schools, alongside cultivating an adult posture of ethical restraint, attentive presence, and institutional self-critique. The integration of the Closlieu within a Montessori public school illustrates how this hybridisation can foster transformative possibilities for reconfiguring power, voice, and recognition in everyday schooling.
