Conference Program

In contemporary educational debate, the relationship between families and educational institutions is most often discussed through the language of parental involvement, partnership, and shared accountability. While these perspectives have undoubtedly contributed to acknowledging the relevance of families in educational processes, they also tend to assume the institutional framework as the primary locus of education. Within this view, the family risks being interpreted mainly in terms of its degree of alignment with institutional expectations, rather than being recognised in its own pedagogical specificity. From a social pedagogical standpoint, this raises a more fundamental question concerning the educational meaning of the family as a generative space.

Social pedagogy has long emphasised that education cannot be reduced to instruction or institutional provision alone but unfolds within relationships through which new generations are gradually introduced to a shared world. In this sense, the family represents the first context in which the asymmetrical responsibility of adults towards those who arrive in the world takes shape. This responsibility does not primarily consist in performing predefined functions, but in sustaining the conditions through which new subjects can find a place in an already existing symbolic and social horizon. Education, therefore, emerges here as a generative practice, rooted in the intergenerational continuity that allows the world to persist while remaining open to renewal.

Reconsidering the notion of generativity within a social pedagogical framework, this reflection interprets generativity not simply as an individual developmental disposition, but as a relational and educational structure connected to the responsibility for the continuity of the human world. Such an interpretation resonates with broader pedagogical reflections that understand education as a response to the arrival of newcomers, whose presence calls for processes of transmission, recognition, and transformation. From this perspective, family generativity can be understood as a fundamental pedagogical condition that precedes institutional arrangements while also making them possible.

This issue appears particularly relevant in late modern societies, where processes of individualisation and functional differentiation have profoundly reshaped both family life and educational institutions. In this context, the relationship between families and institutions is frequently organised around procedural and regulatory frameworks, which, although necessary, may obscure the deeper pedagogical significance of their encounter. A social pedagogical perspective makes it possible to bring this dimension back into view, highlighting how families and institutions participate, in different ways, in a shared generative responsibility.

Reframing family-institution relationships through the lens of generativity allows us to move beyond an exclusively functional understanding and to recognise their common orientation towards the formation of subjects and the continuity of the social world. It also becomes possible to reconsider the public significance of family educational experience, not as a matter external to education, but as one of its essential conditions. By placing generativity at the centre of reflection, this paper seeks to contribute to current international discussions on education, social pedagogy, and democracy, proposing a social pedagogical perspective that understands educational relationships as generative practices through which society assumes responsibility for its own continuity and for the public meaning of education.