Conference Program

In recent decades, research has progressively been incorporated into the educational governance of public policies, assuming a role in legitimizing policy decisions and producing technical instruments (Osborne et al., 2013). Within this framework, the growing emphasis on territorial coordination mechanisms has contributed to reinforcing forms of technocratization in educational policies (Aydarova, 2021), sometimes accompanied by the marginalization of the voices of those targeted by such interventions (Aydarova & Berliner, 2018; Biesta, 2007). In this context, paradigms such as the Educating City, promoted by the International Association of Educating Cities, and the Learning City, promoted by UNESCO, were originally developed to foster lifelong learning, participation, and democratic education (IAEC, 2020; UNESCO, 2014). However, in several contexts these paradigms risk being mobilized as symbolic frameworks within urban development strategies and urban branding policies (Facer & Buchczyk, 2019).
Starting from this tension, the paper proposes a reinterpretation of these paradigms through the adoption of an ecosystemic territorial mapping methodological device (Velez et al., 2025). Inspired by the ecological model of human development developed by Urie Bronfenbrenner (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Rahman, 2025), this tool aims to reconstruct the relationships between actors, institutions, and educational practices within a territory, integrating formal, non-formal, and informal learning and privileging a bottom-up methodological perspective (IAEC, 2021; Velez et al., 2025). Ecosystemic mapping is not conceived here as a mere technical tool for planning or administrative efficiency. Rather, it is understood as an investigative practice capable of making visible the interdependencies between territorial actors, power asymmetries, and the blind spots of local educational policies (Velez et al., 2025).
The paper argues that ecosystemic mapping can transform a practice frequently used in territorial governance into a reflexive device oriented toward democratic participation. Through the involvement of local actors and the valorization of distributed educational practices, this approach enables the re-centering of marginalized voices within processes of defining territorial educational agendas (Nation et al., 2020). From this standpoint, educational research is reinterpreted not as a simple technical support for governance, but as a critical practice capable of contributing to the construction of more participatory and inclusive educational ecosystems (Akiva et al., 2020).