Conference Program

The pedagogical and cultural journal of the Movimento di Cooperazione Educativa (Educational Cooperation Movement) is written by teachers for teachers. It is not a teaching guide; it is meant for both educational research and teacher training, allowing professional development alongside personal growth within a social and political context. We pair the exchange of practices with articles that intertwine academic and pedagogical knowledge—tales from the classroom with tales from the society. The journal is, for us, a collective device for transformative education in adults.

In a recent issue, we asked ourselves and the authors: what is the meaning of education when war becomes a permanent scenario? Amidst war, education and school take on the role of a space for political and cultural resistance, aimed at defusing its symbolic, narrative, and institutional premises. War is a cultural climate entering into schools through media, social networks and homes. When a young girl asks, "Is World War III about to break out?", war is no longer distant. It is already an educational experience. In the interview with Domenico Quirico, a critical point that we share emerged: do not hide the causes of wars from children. Protecting them does not mean lying or simplifying until emptying things of meaning, but rather supporting them toward understanding. If war is also a cultural invention—and not inscribed in our DNA, as Telmo Pievani notes—then in school that construction can be challenged. And perhaps, as suggested by Zournazi and Marcon, hope is not naive optimism, but a political practice of "positive peace”, which is not merely the absence of war, but the construction of justice and social conditions that make coexistence possible.

The Movimento di Cooperazione Educativa has a long term experience of transformative education that seeks to contribute to the building of a culture of peace. By transformative education, we do not mean just a set of teaching methods, but a critical process that impacts on the daily coexistence in the classroom. In our practices, cooperation is not a technique, but a pedagogical principle.

The shared construction of rules, decision-making processes and responsibility, the use of research as a learning practice constitute devices through which democracy is exercised, not simply presented in lectures. Listening is not a teaching strategy, but an epistemic recognition. Even conflict is embraced in a transformative perspective. Conflict becomes an opportunity for revising one's certainties and a shared definition of the “us”.

A culture of peace is therefore not an additional content, but a daily form of experienced coexistence, in which the role of language as a common ground for mutual agreement and understanding is pivotal. "It is the language that makes us equal" still holds true today for the new citizens coming from every continent who inhabit our classrooms and our schools.