Conference Program

In many contemporary school systems, student participation is formally recognised yet often confined to representative bodies with limited influence on decision-making. Student councils frequently operate within adult-dominated decision-making structures, limiting students’ real influence on school governance and learning processes (Sousa & Ferreira, 2024; Fielding, 2013; Hope 2012a; Lundy & Cook-Sather, 2016). Many school-based participation mechanisms remain anchored in representative models that grant students marginal decision-making authority.

This paper examines how some democratic schools experiment with organisational and pedagogical arrangements that challenge these limits. It draws on preliminary findings from an ongoing comparative doctoral research project “RE-DE-PART - Reimagining Democratic Participation”, which investigates the organisational, pedagogical and relational configurations under which students’ participation can move beyond symbolic representation and become a meaningful component of school governance. Drawing on three school cases, the study explores the conditions that enable student influence and the transferability of high-intensity democratic practices to Italian public schooling.

Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative, comparative and participatory design (Yin, 2018; Pastori, 2017; Mantovani, 2007), combining multi-site case studies in three upper-secondary schools (France, Italy, the Netherlands). The selected cases represent distinct configurations of democratic schooling: deliberative co-management within a public experimental lycée; a sociocratic, self-directed democratic school; and a public school engaged in structural innovation (DADA model) but characterised by predominantly representative participation. Reflexive research tools, such as participatory video (Colucci, 2016; Lunch et al., 2006), are employed to position students as epistemic agents documenting and critically rethinking participation. Within this design, the Italian case study includes an intergenerational co-design component aimed at reinterpreting insights from the two highly participatory schools to inform guidelines for democratic school governance.

The literature review on highly participatory schools identifies three interconnected organisational and pedagogical configurations:

1. Governance infrastructures and devices: weekly assemblies, school councils, justice committees, sociocratic circles, and shared decision-making bodies that redistribute deliberative authority and formalise students’ equal status in decision processes (Aquarone, 2021; Hecht, 2012; Hope, 2012b; Gray & Chanoff, 1986; Morrison, 2024; Gawlicz & Millei, 2022), thus embedding democracy across school life.
2. Curricular pathways: negotiated curricula, flexible timetables, and self-directed learning environments that align decision-making power with epistemic agency in learning (De Cesare, 2024; Grey, 1986; Korkmaz and Erden, 2014).
3. Values and pedagogical foundations: pedagogical and governance devices grounded in the principles affirmed within the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC, 1989), particularly participation and equality as fundamental rights.

This findings suggest that democratic governance is not merely a participatory decision-making structure but a core pedagogical architecture through which democracy is learned through practice, echoing Dewey’s conception of democracy as a form of life (Dewey, 1916). However, even in highly participatory settings, power asymmetries persist. Although often criticized for not maximizing traditional academic outcomes, democratic education instead redefines success in terms of justice, well-being, and meaningful participation. When critically and contextually reinterpreted, these practices may inform hybrid configurations of school democracy that combine representation with more direct forms of participation, helping reimagine Italian schooling as a more democratic space.